Ship of The Valkyries
by Speaker for the Dead aka 17
Summary: Q gets itchy fingers, kidnaps all the Trek men and puts all the women on a hell-raising ride on the USS Voyager. Hilarity (and insanity) ensues. (TNG/DS9/VOY crossover) [COMPLETED!]
1. Default Chapter

valkryies1 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part One)

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A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

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Author's note: This fanfic idea actually sprung off a comment made by Q in the _Voyager_ episode "Deathwish" about the 'ship of the Valkryies' because all the men were gone. So my fellow drone-plushie 15 and I were thinking it would be really kewl if they had a ship just like that with no guys. We kinda realized that the twenty-fourth century Trek women actually fit quite well into the roles needed to run a starship, and I finally decided to get it started! For you 15! *smyle*

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Caveat: Suspension of Time, Reality and Belief begins here. So you can't blame/nitpick/sue me for any discrepancies, inconsistencies or irrelevancies, **BWAAHAHAHA**!!! *ahem***** sorry.

The story supposedly takes place in the early fifth season of _Voyager_ (and therefore sixth of DS9), post-_First Contact_ but pre-_Insurrection_. Insert any stardate you like. I'm not putting any in.

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Disclaimer: Star Trek and everything else are registered trademarks and intellectual property of Paramount Pictures, which kinda goes without saying, because it is SO obvious I have no intellect whatsoever. *shrugs* Who cares?

Kira Nerys was beyond bone tired, a condition which was impossible anyway since bones didn't do any work and never got tired like normal muscles got tired. Not in the way Kira was tired now, at any rate. She felt like if she just closed her eyes she'd slump over onto the nearest support surface and go right to sleep.

So why the heck was she still out here in this infernally noisy bar with Jadzia Dax, getting elbowed, yelled at and annoyed with the perpetually drunken patrons at Quark's? _I should be in my nice peaceful quarters having a nice peaceful time taking a nice peaceful nap!_

Jadzia seemed oblivious to her friend's major discomfort and went on talking to the cute Terrelian guy sitting next to her. Kira scrutinized him for a while, decided that the thing she liked best about him was the end of his nose, which seemed less red than the rest of his face, and then looked around for something more interesting to feast her eyes on. Like the edges of carpet on the floor, for example. She thudded her head dully against the support strut flanking the ends of the bar. _And can you believe that I'm on duty in Ops first thing tomorrow morning?_ The horrors of living on a space station.

Jadzia broke off her conversation with the less-than-engaging Terrelian guy and turned to give Kira a wicked grin. Kira couldn't even muster the energy to twitch one of the twenty-three muscles required to smile back, much less one of the forty-two required to frown disapprovingly at her friend. So she merely stoned.

Jadzia didn't have a hard time realizing that Kira was less than enthused by these turns of events. "What's wrong, Major?" she asked. "Aren't you having fun?"

Kira somehow found the brainpower for a sarcastic remark. "Oh, no, I'm having the most fun of my life out here being rattled, shaken and jarred even though I have been up for forty-eight hours and I need some friggin' _sleep_!"

Jadzia threw up her hands in mild annoyance. "Relax, Nerys, we're supposed to be off duty!"

"And off duty means sleep!" she retorted.

The Trill sighed and slapped her hand lightly on the edge of the bar. "The problem with you, is that you get so caught up and stressed up with your work that you don't know when and how to unwind!"

Kira, who had shut her eyes and slumped against the support strut a while ago, opened one eye to glare at Jadzia. "This coming from Miss Prim-and-Proper Starfleet Officer. I'd laugh if I had the energy."

"I'll show you Miss Prim-and-Proper in Ops tomorrow. Tonight I'm Madam Wild-and-Frivolous." Jadzia grabbed Kira's wrist and pulled her towards the center of the bar. "Come on, let's get a drink."

"Damn you and your chameleon personality," grumbled Kira, being unwillingly dragged along. "I suppose all you have to do is pretend you're Curzon and you can stay awake the whole night long flirting with men."

"On the contrary," said Jadzia, glancing back with a wicked smile, "if I were pretending to be Curzon I'd be flirting with all the _women_." She turned to scan the crowded bar. "Oh look, here comes Quark."

"Great, just what I needed," muttered Kira. "More Ferengi wheedling. Come on, Jadzia, I've been listening to them whine at me one after another _all day_. Give me a break, Jadzia, let's go!" And she tugged back hard on her friend's wrist.

Quark, approaching his two all-time favorite customers- well, nearly- caught wind of the last snatches of conversation and quickly stepped up his pace, hoping to catch them before they got away. But even before the word "Wait!" was out of his mouth, the duo had disappeared in a flash of light faster than one could say "latinum".

Quark blinked. "But I hadn't even said anything yet!" he protested to the empty spot once occupied by the two women.

******

In an abrupt flash of light, the sights, sounds, and most importantly, the owner of the bar disappeared from around Kira. For a moment, she thought that her prayers had been answered and the Prophet's divine intervention had saved her from her miserable plight. Until she saw the Borg, that was.

Immediately Kira's hand went to her phaser, her mind jumping to Red Alert, exhaustion momentarily forgotten. But the Borg was faster, and her hand went to the communicator on her chest. "Seven of Nine to Security. Intruder Alert!"

It was still coming through to Kira's dazed mind that this woman wasn't in full Borg regalia, looked mostly human in spite of the gray implant she sported on her left eyebrow, right cheek and hand, and most alarmingly, she wore a perfectly recognizable Starfleet commbadge on her chocolate unitard.

Her unnaturally huge blue eyes narrowed. "State your intentions."

Jadzia was stumped. "I don't know how we got here. Where are we? Half a moment ago we were-"

Kira interrupted her in the middle of her explanation, thinking she had a better, more succinct answer. "I want to go to bed." _I'm probably already asleep in the middle of Quark's Bar at any rate, having some odd dream about meeting up with a dolled-up Borg._

Seven of Nine- if that was her designation- gave Kira a look which plainly said that the Borg thought she was insane. Kira couldn't really care less.

Jadzia nudged her away gently, probably figuring that she wasn't capable of coherent thought, much less coherent speech. "As I was saying, we were unwillingly transported from _Deep Space Nine_ to here a moment ago. I'm afraid I have no idea what's going on. Where _is_ this place?"

And for the first time Kira noticed her surroundings, which were pointedly non-Cardassian in design. Instead it more resembled the interior of a Federation starship, except that she'd never seen any part of any starship which looked like _this_. Consoles with dark glass tops ringed the circumference of the somewhat circular room, and she stood directly in front of a series of projectors and a wide viewscreen which took up a large part of one wall. It reminded Kira of the more impressive exhibition halls in some of the higher-end science museums she'd visited. Was it some kind of observation room, or an _avant garde_ Stellar Cartography?

The Borg replied crisply, "You are in Astrometrics on board the USS _Voyager_, NCC-74656."

Kira frowned at the familiarity of the name. Then it clicked. "Of course! The ship which disappeared after leaving on its maiden voyage from our station!" She shuddered, remembering. "The investigation was pure hell."

Jadzia and Dax's brains, on the other hand, were working much faster and she caught the implications almost immediately. "But isn't the _Voyager_ trapped in the Delta Quadrant?"

"Affirmative," replied Seven.

Even Kira wasn't too stoned to realize what that meant. "What?!? You mean… we're out here, on the other side of the galaxy? How are we supposed to get back? I'm not interested in a seventy-year journey back to my quarters and sleep!"

Seven looked perturbed, then tapped her communicator again. "Seven of Nine to Janeway."

A low feminine voice replied from the other end, deep and smoky. " Janeway here."

"I believe we have a problem."

Kira could practically hear Janeway roll her eyes in utter exasperation. "Tell me about it." She felt exactly the same way.

******

Reunions with old friends were always nice, thought Dr. Beverly Crusher distantly as she sat in the officers lounge. She was in the officer's lounge. The reunion was in the officer's lounge. Now, if only the friends were here, then life would be perfect. She rolled her eyes. Where was everyone?

As if on cue, Guinan slid into the room with the timeless grace that she had. "I'm sorry I'm late," she told Crusher in that soothing, mellow voice of hers. "Deanna is caught up with work, and won't be coming."

Crusher waved her hand dismissively. "Well, they always say three's a crowd. Deanna isn't necessary for our reunion." She grinned wickedly.

Guinan smiled at Crusher. "I'll be sure to tell her that the next time I see her." She settled down beside the doctor. "So, what's with the new haircut?"

"Oh, you mean this?" Crusher laughed, fingering locks of short strawberry blond hair. "Actually I've had this style for quite a while now. It was either this or a tribble haircut- so I picked this."

Guinan tried to imagine the good doctor with a tribble as a hairpiece and found it hard to keep a straight face. "So how's life been on the _Enterprise_-E?"

"Oh, aside from Borg attacks, Cardassians and the Dominion War? Peachy, perfectly peachy."

"Speared by your rapier wit, as usual," said Guinan with that enigmatic smile of hers. "I'm sure that life outside the subspace distortion bubble around the _Enterprise_ is untouched by the same."

Crusher said nothing, letting her playful glare speak volumes. " This is probably the reason why they decided not to have a Ten-Forward lounge on the _Enterprise_ anymore…"

"Speaking of which, how does this place measure up to our old Ten-Fore?" Guinan glanced around the empty lounge. "Hmm. Nice furniture, I must say."

Crusher shrugged, unwilling to concede to defeat. "People don't really come here that often anymore. It must be the ugly chairs, or something." She paused in thought. "I miss Ten Forward, though. It had a… special ambience." She nudged Guinan. "Still interested in taking up a post on the _Enterprise_?"

Before Guinan could answer a raucous cacophony broke out from the entrance to the officer's lounge. It was the male portion of the senior crew, coming in for a barbaric session of male bonding. They spied the women and came over, mouths fixed into evil grins, preparing to drive them crazy. Crusher rolled her eyes as Riker leaned over and asked in a particularly annoying voice, "Are you having fun, girls?"

"They haven't changed one bit," laughed Guinan patiently.

"I wish they'd all just disappear and leave us alone," grumbled Crusher.

Then all the men around her disappeared in a flash of light. For a brief moment Crusher thought that a miracle had happened and someone had heard her silent prayer.

Then she realized she wasn't on the _Enterprise_ anymore.

She was standing on a smaller, mostly empty circular bridge, smack in the center with a confused Guinan and Troi. There was a fourth woman standing in the middle of the bridge as well; a small, trim woman with glowing auburn hair, and clear, albeit alarmed, blue eyes. She dressed in an outdated uniform and had four pips on her collar: a captain.

Crusher blinked in surprise. "Where are we?"

The redhead shot them what could only have been an annoyed glance. "What have you done to the rest of my crew?" she demanded, hands on her hips.

Crusher exchanged a nervous, confused glance with Troi. "Nothing," she blurted, barely managing to avoid saying _Mom_ at the end of it.

The redhead's glare intensified. Yep, definitely annoyed. Then she gave a long-suffering sigh and gestured expansively at the empty bridge around her. "This is most interesting. A few moments ago I was on a bridge with a _full_ complement, and now I'm the only person on that bridge left. And the three of you just appear from nowhere. Any ideas why?" She paused. "Oh, by the way… I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship _Voyager_." She held her hand out to Crusher, who gingerly shook it, still blinking. "And you are?"

"Dr. Beverly Crusher of the Starship _Enterprise_…" She assessed the situation mentally. "If you ask me, it sounds like some puerile intergalactic prank to me. Swap The Starship Crews, or something."

Troi started. "_Voyager_? Wasn't that the ship which was trapped in some faraway quadrant or the other?"

"The Delta Quadrant," offered Janeway helpfully.

Troi nodded. "Halfway across the galaxy. Great. Now what's Ensign McKinley going to think? First counseling session and the counselor disappears to other side of the known universe."

Janeway angled an odd glance at her. "And you are the counselor of the _Enterprise_, I suppose?"

"Counselor Deanna Troi," she affirmed.

Guinan folded her arms, thinking. "If you ask me, this whole affair reeks too much of _him_."

Janeway gave her an intense stare catching on some subverbal cue at once. "Q?"

Crusher was mildly surprised. "You know Q? What makes you think he's behind all this?"

"Well, who else could have done this? Or _would_ have done this?" countered Troi.

"True," conceded Crusher.

Janeway's communicator trilled. "Seven of Nine to Janeway."

She slapped her badge in mild irritation. "Janeway here."

The silky voice replied, "I believe we have a problem."

The captain rolled her eyes in exasperation and threw up her hands. "Tell me about it."


	2. Chapter 2

valkryies2 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Two)

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A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

When she'd called for this conference, Janeway had hoped to elucidate some stickier points of their current situation. But now, seated in the middle of eight others just as and even more confused than she, Janeway was beginning to suspect that it might not exactly have been the best idea. She glanced around the crew, attaching names to faces. _Jadzia Dax, Kira Nerys, Keiko O'Brien, Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi, Guinan and the remains of my crew._ She stood up, trying one last attempt at order. "Okay, so we have established that large portions of our respective crews have been somehow misplaced. Is there any significance to that?" she asked.

"No men. None at all," Jadzia observed. "I checked. Every last male member of the Starship _Voyager_ is nowhere to be found, and the crew replacing them is exclusively female."

"And the three selected crews all have a history of contact with Q," interjected Seven of Nine.

"Q's only been on _Deep Space Nine_ once," Kira pointed out. "But it was hell enough already."

Guinan narrowed her eyes. "So Q basically kidnaps the men of _Voyager_, and replaces them with women from his two favorite starship crews. Why?"

Janeway stared distantly, thinking. "The Ship of the Valkryies…"

"Captain, you're not seriously thinking of _that, _are you?" asked Torres, folding her arms.

"Who can fathom the thinking of a Q?" said Janeway, shrugging. "To him, it's just another day of fun and games."

As if on cue, Q appeared, dressed in the garb of a carnival clown. "Was someone looking for me?" he asked sweetly.

"Enough of games, Q," snapped Janeway, folding her arms. "Why don't you just spare us the agony and tell us exactly what you are hoping to achieve by this?" She gestured around the assembly of women.

"Enough of games?" asked Q, scandalized. "But the fun hasn't even begun!" He walked around the table, looking unbelievably ridiculous in his puffy, garish clown suit. Crusher suppressed an urge to giggle. "Oh, I know how you will react, all your little protests and fits of histronics…" Q shuddered melodramatically. "_That_, by the way, were my biggest worry when I decided to put together an entire crew comprised of _women_… non-stop blathering and nagging. Almost as bad as that old hag, Jean-Luc Picard. Anyway… I have absolutely no doubt that none of you spoilsports are going to play along with me if I ask nicely, no?"

All he got in return were nine basilisk stares. "You human women are _so_ difficult." He shook his head as if aggrieved. "I am proven right…. as usual." He clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. "So! With you being mortals, the only way to get you to cooperate is to tempt you, of course."

Janeway snorted derisively. "I'm afraid _bribing_ us isn't going to work. You'll have to find a more creative approach."

"Bribing? Who said anything about bribing?" asked Q in an innocent manner which none of them bought. "I thought a small reward would be a little more in order." He shrugged nonchalantly. "After all, you _do_ want to get your men back, don't you?"

Janeway's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

At this Guinan stood up, unable to take anymore nonsense from the omnipotent being anymore. "Alright, Q. None of us want to suffer anymore of your dramatics and your twisted ideas of 'fun'. Tell us straight what it is that you want."

Q pouted slightly. "I won't tell you the rules of the game until you commit yourself to playing, darling,"

Janeway slapped her hands on the table in frustration, their inactivity driving her close to losing it. "Dammit Q, alright! We'll play your ridiculous games; now tell us what the hell we're supposed to do!"

Q's face lit up with a pleased, wolfish smile. "Ah. I'd knew that you'd finally come to your senses!" With a snap of his fingers they were instantly gathered on a brightly-lit sound stage about the size of a shuttle hangar. A hundred or so other similar groups stood around the hangar as well, and they gazed up at Q on the speaker's podium with an air of eagerness, reverence even. Q was now dressed in a pin-striped suit in shades of red and white, complete with matching top hat and a microphone to boot.

He addressed the audience facing them; a roaring crowd of thousands so vast they seemed to be a teeming living mass pressed against the far side of the hangar walls. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, enemies and allies, sentient beings and" here his voice dripped with distaste and pity-"humans, welcome, welcome! Welcome to the first ever-Intergalactic Treasure Hunt! As you are all aware, you are witnessing history in the making right before your very eyes! It is a day where beings from all around the universe unite, despite their differences, to participate in a week of non-stop entertainment. How noble. How altruistic. And most of all, how utterly, unabashedly and pointlessly delightful! So without further ado, may I introduce the contestants? Standing on the far right in blue suits is the Tak Tak delegation. Don't use violent hand gestures when you're near them; they think most of them are obscene..." He paused for the wild raucous cheers and laughs. "Next, we have the Pendari delegation…"

Somewhere in the middle of the thirty-seventh introduction, Janeway realized she was falling asleep standing right up in the middle of the sound stage. It would have been mortally embarrassing. Why couldn't Q just speed things up by speaking faster, for example?

Without warning a duplicate of Q appeared beside Janeway, whispering in her ear. "Too slow for you, dearest?"

Janeway suppressed a gagging reflex to the saccharine sweetness of Q's tone and grumbled, "Do we really need to know the lineage of every contestant from his or her great-grandmother?" She gestured to the blathering figure on whom the spotlight shone the brightest. "If you can't speed yourself up, at least put a muter on yourself!"

"Okay, point taken. Let's put me on fast forward, shall we?" Q mimed pressing a button on a remote control and his identical counterpart's movements became hyperaccelerated, fading into a blur. "Stop."

The duplicate Q disappeared, leaving the original Q speaking in his normal hyperbolic style of delivery. "Last, and _definitely_ least, we have a delegation representing the United Federation of Planets!" Q gestured to them, and the hall was filled with a mixture of scathing laughter and jeers. Janeway rolled here eyes. He _HAD_ to do that.

Torres wasn't as amused. "We're not here for your entertainment, Q, we have a job to do and we want to start on it as soon as possible!"

Q ignored her and continued. "Treasure hunting! The term brings forth so much subtle danger and intrigue within it! It reminds one of hardy pirates and their loot, foolish young men, and of course, beautiful women…" he angled a hungry grin at the Starfleet delegation as he said this. He flexed his arms briefly. "Today your quest will be similar. Each group is given a map and a clue to solve the mystery of where the next clue will be, and so on and so forth until you reach _le grand prize_. Along the way, you may receive aid from me, of course, depending on the weather, how well you performed at the last obstacle and of course, my mood at that time." He gave the assembly a devilish grin. "Simple enough?"

A Ferengi from his homeworld guild stood up. "Just what does the grand prize consist of, by the way?"

"Oh, It depends on who you are, of course. It might be a lifetime's supply of latinum, or-" he gave the women and evil look- "some boys for you to play with."

"What's the time limit on this game? How long do we have to complete the quest?" asked Keiko O'Brien.

"Only as long as the next best team," replied Q wickedly, and then he snapped his fingers.

******

It was all dizzyingly confusing, all this abrupt hopping from one place to another. Troi was having a hard time keeping all her thoughts together, much less the thoughts of those around her. She sensed weary annoyance from Kira, overwhelming frustration from Janeway, and utter confusion from just about everybody else.

But this time there was another new addition to the room, this time a small young woman with large blue eyes hovering on the edge of unease. She was dressed in a simple flight of a white gown, and held a large blue clipboard, pencil and all, in one hand. "Group 9c?" she asked somewhat nervously.

"Who are you?" Janeway demanded of her.

She backed up a little. "I'm Cassandra, the Diocese in charge of your group for this game." She attempted a smile and got nine scowls in return. "I'm here to make the job a little easier for you?"

Deanna suddenly felt a rush of sympathy for this poor child, who was probably feeling highly intimidated by now and not really up to doing any leading of the game. "Why don't you tell us more about what we're supposed to do?"

"Right… right." She smiled at Troi, thanking her for the reminder of her purpose in the game. She flipped through the stack of paper attached to her clipboard. "There are seven stations, and you'll be starting at station three- that's the Maze of Alderaan." Then her expression fell. "Oh no, not the Maze…" 

"What's the Maze?" asked Keiko cautiously.

Cassandra rubbed her forehead with one hand. "I told Q I couldn't do this job, I'm too sympathetic towards the contestants, but does he listen? _Nooo_, he has to put me with you on purpose." She addressed the crew apologetically. "I'm going to make such a terrible Diocese."

"It's alright," said Troi soothingly. "I'm sure you'll do a great job. Why don't you tell us more about the maze?"

"Thank you, Counselor, but I believe I have a lot of administrative work to do before that." She flipped through a checklist. "Registration, yes, briefing, yes, ordering…" She glanced up at the women. "You all have a hierachial order to follow, I suppose?" When all she got was blank stares, she patiently elucidated, "Your ranks and posts?"

They nodded. "Excellent," she said, sounding just like a schoolteacher. "Now, let me just record all your ranks and positions down… Captain?"

"That would be me, I suppose," said Janeway.

"Alright. Captain…. Kathryn Janeway… First officer?"

There was silence in the room. Cassandra glanced up. "First officer?"

Kira glanced around the room, realizing everyone was waiting for her to speak. "Me? Not again… alright, alright, put me down for it." She sank deeper into her chair, muttering.

Cassandra scribbled some more. "Kira Nerys… Engineer… would be Lieutenant Torres, I suppose?"

Torres nodded. "Well, can't exactly assign me as a doctor, can you?"

Cassandra chuckled, then pointed to Crusher with the nib of her stylus. "Doctor?"

Crusher made a gesture of acceptance, pursing her lips slightly.

"Okay… counselor… that's a little redundant, actually." She glanced up at Troi. "Sorry, no offense, but emotional repair doesn't really play a very big part in this game- that comes after. Do you want to select another post, or shall I do it for you?"

Troi smiled at her. "It's all right. Do you have an Operations post available?"

"Yes. Okay, now that we've got it settled, it gets a little tricky." She gestured to Jadzia and Seven. "One of you are going to be a science officer. Decide now."

Jadzia glanced at Seven. "I'll fly the ship, you handle the Console Playground we arrived in."

Seven tilted her head. "Acceptable," she conceded.

"So… Science officer, Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct to the Unimatrix One-Zero- nearly ran out of writing space there… Helm officer… Jadzia Dax. I hope I'm not messing up any of the calculations." Then she glanced helplessly up and Keiko and Guinan. "Bartender and botanist… I have no idea what to put you under."

"Auxiliary operations," suggested Guinan with a smile.

"Precisely. Now that should settle it… oh, wait. We need a security officer."

Janeway glanced around the room. "We don't have one present, unless you want to consider Ayala…"

Cassandra shook her head. "It's alright; you don't need any one at tactical as yet for the first station. We'll do it this way: if you succeed at first in this quest, I'll get you some security personnel. Fair enough?"

Janeway nodded. "So what is the first station about, again?"

"It's the Maze of Alderaan. Self-explanatory title, get to the end of the Maze where the clue to find the next quest station will be. And a little prize for you at each stage, just for encouragement." She smiled at the crew. "My idea."

"Sounds exciting," said Guinan with a smile.

Janeway spread her hands. "Let's do it."


	3. Chapter 3

valkryies3 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Three)

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A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

The seats onboard _Voyager_ were a lot more cushy than the ones on the _Defiant_, thought Jadzia as she settled down at the helm of the Intrepid-class vessel. She let her fingers roam around the console, gauging it, getting acclimatized to it. The ship did not have as many fancy bells and whistles as the Defiant did, but it was pretty snazzy nonetheless, and would definitely do for a simple maze. She set a course for the coordinates provided by Cass. "Course plotted, Captain."

"Do it," acknowledged Janeway.

__

Like the sound of that. Jadzia smiled secretly to herself as she tapped the commands into the console. The thrumming of the ship's engines rose as the ship jumped to warp. The whole experience seemed so surreal, like a strange dream. Well, actually anything with Q in it was wont to be called a nightmare, but Jadzia was having a pretty good time now.

Kira, on the other hand, slouched in the chair to the right of Janeway, didn't seem to be enjoying this experience at all. The Bajoran was grumpy and tired when she'd arrived on this ship, and she was still grumpy and tired, owing mostly to the fact that she hadn't gotten any sleep yet. And the distance between them and the Alpha Quadrant was grating on her nerves. Jadzia knew that Kira constantly worried about the outcome of the Dominion War- come on, who didn't?- and this separation was worrying her. Jadzia sincerely hoped that it wasn't a permanent arrangement, or their helplessness was going to drive them crazy.

When _Voyager_ dropped out of warp several hours later, Jadzia thought she'd learnt more than a few valuable life lessons. Firstly, certain captains didn't appreciate the notion of being called 'madam' and preferred to be addressed by their rank- like Janeway, for example. Secondly, botanists didn't appreciate the notion of being put in charge of weapons and worried constantly about it- like Keiko, for example. Thirdly, disgruntled Bajorans didn't appreciate the concept of humor, and wanted to do nothing with it- like Kira, for example. She shook her head.

The Maze of Alderaan hung before them, walls of solid plasma glowing in beautiful incandescent colors. "Is that it?" she asked.

Cass, ensconced in one of the stations at the side of the bridge, nodded in affirmation. "You got it. See that arch over there? That's the beginning of the maze. All you have to do is to get in through one side and exit through the other. The maze itself is about four point seven Astronomical Units across- but its size changes."

"It _changes_?" asked Troi incredulously. "You mean it's not a static maze?"

"Only the parts which you haven't been through rearrange themselves… so you can backtrack any time you want," replied Cass in her gentle, soothing voice. "Don't worry, it's not as bad as it seems."

"I hope," muttered Kira pessimistically.

Janeway glanced disapprovingly at her new doomsaying first officer, probably wishing she had her usual man in her place. "I'm sure we've been through worse. After all, it's only a maze. How bad can it get?"

"You don't say," Kira warned her.

__

Voyager drifted into the maze.

Jadzia steered the ship carefully through the narrow plasma passages while Seven charted a map of their previous movements. At her first junction she turned left, came to a dead end, backtracked and went right. Then she made more branches, more options, more choices, arrived at dead ends, backtracked, still dead ends, backtrack still some more, branch, make selections, dead end, backtrack….

Halfway through her forty-seventh junction, Jadzia suddenly wondered if the shifting of the maze might have caused this difficulty of finding the exit.

At her hundred and forty-seventh junction she wondered if they had gone past and missed the exit.

At her hundred and ninety-seventh junction she began wondering if the maze actually had an exit in the first place.

Kira began to look bored. "This isn't going anywhere."

"It most certainly is not," agreed Jadzia heartily as they ran into another dead end. "Cass, some help here?"

Cass shrugged fluidly. "You're not that desperate yet."

Kira shot her a dangerous look. "You wanna bet?"

"Um," said Troi politely, "I hate to interrupt, but sensors are picking up a huge object heading in our direction on a collision course. We have five minutes. Are we just going to sit here and bicker, or are we going to do something about it?"

Janeway rose from her seat. "Put it on."

The women stared at the viewscreen for a stunned moment. Finally Janeway spoke. "What is that?"

Troi shrugged. "All I know is, it's composed of some sort of bio-organic matter and its heading in our direction _fast_."

The pink agglomeration on their viewscreen looked nothing less than a giant pink space slug, complete with an ugly slit for a mouth and a long pair of antenna which it used to sweep the area around it, possibly searching for a tasty morsel to eat. Like _Voyager_, for example.

As if on cue, it speeded up, heading for the ship like a shark drawn to blood.

Cass smiled. "Still want to take up that bet, Major?"

"Now what?" asked Keiko.

"_Run_," said Janeway.

Jadzia didn't need to be told twice. She slammed her hands down in the twenty-fourth century version of flooring the pedal, and the ship rocketed off so fast the inertia dampers barely had time to compensate. The pink slug followed. Fingers racing across the console, Jadzia sped away into the depths of the maze, forgetting completely about completing it. Survival was the most important. Her keen hands deftly steered the ship down the narrow winding corridors, swinging past tight corners, maneuvering the convoluted pathways. She twisted their trajectory downwards, skimmed under a plasma wall into another corridor, weaving in and out between treacherous columns of roiling orange gases. 

Yet the pink globule pursuing them never gave up the chase, doggedly remaining on their tail. Jadzia turned abruptly at a junction, trying to shake it off, and barely missed clipping the starboard nacelle off. A chorus of alarmed yelps ran across the bridge. "Relax," she exclaimed, "I know what I'm doing!"

She accelerated the ship some more, then suddenly slammed down on the reverse thrusters, almost instantly bringing the ship to a full stop. The deceleration was so sudden Janeway tumbled out of her chair and ended up on the deck in a confused ball. Despite the urgency of the situation Kira couldn't stifle a giggle.

Janeway would have shot her a venomous look, but other things were on her mind. She saw the reason for their abrupt lack of motion: a towering wall of plasma blocked the end of the corridor mere hundreds of feet away. They'd hit a dead end.

Jadzia swore.

"The … entity is closing fast," Troi informed them.

"We're stuck," Kira realized.

"Not necessarily so," rebutted Janeway, thinking fast. "There must be another way out…"

"Well, do _something_!" exclaimed Kira impatiently. "Keiko, you're at tactical, for Prophet's sake! Do something! Shoot something!"

Keiko looked at her like she was crazy. "It's a living thing, Major, you can't just-"

"Not at the blob, fire at the _plasma wall_!"

"Of course! A dispersion charge!" exclaimed Janeway. "Seven, would it be enough to break us free from here?"

"Theoretically, it might."

"Then what are we waiting for? The slug isn't getting any further away- _fire_!"

Keiko needed no further bidding. An orange dispersion beam shot out from _Voyager_'s deflector dish, carving a huge hole in the side of the plasma wall. Jadzia flew the ship through as the wall began to regenerate, closing the hole behind them, effectively locking them away from the hungry pink slug.

"Look," said Troi in amazement, "the stars."

Everyone turned to gaze at the viewscreen in wonder. It'd seemed like days since they'd last seen the stars, pure and simple, untainted by the incandescence of plasma gases. "We made it out of the maze…" said Keiko in amazement.

"So all we had to do was to break through the plasma walls to get out?" asked Jadzia incredulously. "Why didn't we think of that earlier?"

Cass smiled enigmatically. "Sometimes, in a Quest, one must take a creative approach to solving it."

Janeway smiled at Kira. "That was some initiative," she said, impressed.

Kira shrugged. "No, just desperation." But her ill temper seemed to have been mollified by the triumph of their first mission. _One down, six more to go…_

"Excellent," said Cass, jotting something down on her clipboard. "I promised you a tactical officer if you did well on the first quest, didn't I?" She pointed to the space in front of the ship. "Behold."

The space in front of the ship slowly began to distort, twisting and turning color, glowing softly. Faster and faster it spun until finally a small, neat wormhole was sitting in space right in front of _Voyager_. The women were impressed.

A small battered craft came careening out of the wormhole, coming to a halt before _Voyager_. The wormhole faded fast behind it. "She's here."

Kira stared suspiciously at the dilapidated frieghter. "It's got Bajoran markings."

Cass shrugged. "Bajoran pilot."

Janeway nodded. "Deanna, see if you can establish connections with the ship."

"Unnecessary," Troi replied. "She's hailing us."

"Put her on."

The face that came on the viewscreen was that of a haunted woman, one who'd seen too much suffering and war in her life. Yet here eyes were wide in amazement as she surveyed her new surroundings, probably wondering how in the world she was abruptly transported over to the other side of the known universe. Kira drew in a sharp breath. She knew this woman- of course she did! The woman scanned the bridge, saw Kira, and her preternaturally- large eyes widened. "Nerys?"

"Laren? What are you doing here?"

******

"I can't believe Q would do something like this!" fumed Ro as she stormed down the corridors of _Voyager_, Troi and Kira flanking her on either side. "I was on a mission. An _important_ mission. And he had to drag me all the way here!"

"A Maquis mission, no doubt," said Troi dryly.

"Don't even start," snapped Ro, obviously not in the most sociable of moods right now, a condition Kira fully empathized with. "This hasn't exactly been the best day in my life."

"Tell me about it," muttered Kira mirthfully as they stepped into the turbolift.

"So…" asked Ro almost casually as the doors slid shut and the lift made its way to its destination, "what was it I have to do on this ship, again?"

"You're the security officer," Troi informed her. "Serving at Tactical on the bridge."

Ro glanced disparagingly down at her civilian clothes and snorted. "Did I ever tell you how much I hate the Starfleet uniform? It's clumsy, heavy, and it itches."

"I don't think you'll have to wear the uniform. We're all in different ones anyway." She pointed to Kira's red military suit, then at her own gray-shouldered uniform. "Only Dr. Crusher, Lt. Dax and I are in this uniform."

"Really?" Despite herself, Ro was intrigued. "What are the others wearing, their bathrobes? Or swimsuits?"

"The Borg might as well have been wearing one," said Kira, and she and Troi laughed.

Ro, on the other hand, was horrified. "Borg?"

"Oh, don't worry, she's perfectly harmless," said Troi. "Unless you step on her tail, that is."

"Thanks a lot for the assurances," grumbled Ro as they stepped out of the turbolift.

"So, basically, all we have to do is to complete the remaining six Quests Q has in store for us, and we get the prize?" Ro asked as they headed for the Mess Hall, swinging the sling bag on her shoulder carelessly, belying its weight. "Sounds fairly easy to me."

Troi shook her head. "Never underestimate a Q… you just might live to regret it."

"Pessimist," said Kira.

They entered the Mess Hall and Ro found herself looking at a motley crew of women seated around a long table like the High Confederation of Witches. She recognized a few of them: Keiko, Dr. Crusher, Guinan… " 'Lanna?" 

The half-Klingon engineer smiled at her. "It's been a while, I know…"

Ro blinked. "You're here too? So it's true… all they said about you being alive."

"Well, I look alive to you, don't I?" she replied, prompting soft laughter from around. 

Ro suppressed a grin. "I might be dreaming."

"I sincerely hope not."

The petite woman seated at the head of the table rose and came forward to greet her. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship _Voyager_," she said, firmly shaking Ro's hand. "Welcome aboard."

"Thank you," said Ro. "I am… was Lieutenant Ro Laren." She shrugged. "Before I defected, I mean."

Janeway nodded briskly. "I know. Will told me about you."

"Will… Will Riker? You know him?"

Janeway headed back to her seat and tossed Ro a smile over her shoulder. "He was an Academy friend of mine. We used to write regularly… long story." She sat down. "I suppose you more or less know everyone here, then?"

Ro inclined her head slightly, a habit she'd picked up on the _Enterprise_. "Not everyone."

The dark-haired Trill seated on Torres' right stood to introduce herself as Ro moved towards the table. Kira and Troi found seats and settled down. "I'm Lt. Jadzia Dax, science officer assigned to _Deep Space Nine_," she said, shaking Ro's hand.

"I've heard of you," said Ro, nodding. She glanced uncomfortably at the Borg, wondering if she should ask her who she was. 

But the Borg beat her to it. "My designation is Seven of Nine," she said smoothly. "You may call me Seven."

"Seven. It's a pleasure." Ro was somehow glad she didn't have to shake her hand. She glanced at the young woman with wide blue eyes and long golden hair like curls of silk. "And you are-?"

"I am Cassandra, the Diocese in charge of your group." She said pleasantly. "I'm here to guide you in your Quests. Speaking of which, you should proceed to the next one as fast as possible, before the others beat you to it."

Janeway puckered her lips. "You have a point. What's our next station for the Quest?"

Cass produced a slim parchment scroll from somewhere and slid it across the table to Janeway. "There's your clue for the location of the next station."

Mystified, Janeway picked the scroll up and unrolled the yellow paper. On it was written a short, yet somewhat cryptic verse: 

__

Where fire and air meet

And the earth is scattered in legions

On the fourth rock from the sun

Here there be dragons.

Janeway frowned and read it out loud. Cass nodded. "They're all describing the system this next station is located in.

Janeway perused the verse again, thinking. "Air and fire… burning gases? Plasma storms? And earth… I suppose that means rocks. A planetary system with nebulae and asteroids?" She guessed. "What dragons?"

Seven tilted her head to a side, thinking. "There is a planetary system three light years from here which fits the description. The Rinnis system."

"I remember," said Torres, "It's situated in a diffuse Class-5 nebula, asteroid belt between the sixth and seventh planet. The fourth planet is M-class. It could be our next destination, all right."

The women glanced questioningly at Cass, who nodded her affirmation sagely. "That's right. You'll be participating in a dragon slaying competition on Rinnis Four."


	4. Chapter 4

valkryies4 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Four)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

When the meeting was over, Ro followed Kira to her quarters to settle down. Because of lack of space on _Voyager_ crewmembers had to share quarters, and Ro had elected to stay with a fellow Bajoran. Well, it was not like they were extremely close, but Ro remembered the time all those years ago when they'd shared a huge common room together. Well, Kira had been nine then and she'd been twelve, and it was only for a month and in constant fear of the Cardassians, but it was better than nothing.

Kira was shuffling along the corridor, almost as if she had no energy left to move her legs. According to Jadzia, Kira had been awake for more than forty-eight consecutive hours, and the strain was showing. She said almost nothing on the way back, and the moment she was inside the quarters, she made a beeline for the sonic shower.

Maintenance had put a second bed in the first officer's quarters to accommodate the two of them. Ro dropped her sling bag one of them and gazed around the room. It probably wasn't as big as the one Riker had on the _Enterprise_, but it was haven compared to the paltry quarters she had on her cramped, dingy ship. She kicked off her boots, then flopped backwards on the bed. "So…" she asked Kira, "how much experience _do_ you have with dragon slaying, at any rate?"

Kira stepped out of the shower, looking fresh and clean. It must have been on express cycling. "I've never even seen a dragon before. Aren't they supposed to be mythical creatures?"

Ro shrugged as Kira clambered into bed, sighing as she snuggled between the sheets. "Q can make anything real. Even the Easter Bunny. Why not dragons? I wonder who in the world they're going to dispatch to take care of this problem? With my kind of luck they'll probably send me. What do you think, Major?" There was no response. "Major?" Ro turned to look at Kira, only to find her sound asleep. Ro rolled her eyes and got off the bed, preparing for another day of grueling work.

******

"Why me?" protested Torres as she headed down to the Mess Hall with Janeway the next morning. "I have absolutely _no_ experience whatsoever with dragons of any kind!"

"If it's any consolation to you, I'm doubtful that Major Kira or Guinan have any experience in dealing with them either," Janeway told her.

"Thanks _a lot_. It's so comforting to know that I'll be going off to hunt dragons with a group of similarly clueless people."

"It probably isn't going to be as bad as it seems," Janeway assured her as they entered the Mess Hall. Guinan was at the pantry, talking to Ro as she prepared breakfast. Janeway leaned over the counter to see what she was making- it looked like bacon and scrambled eggs. Nice, normal bacon and eggs.

"Morning, Captain," said Ro cheerfully. 

"Morning. Isn't Kira with you?" As Guinan handed Ro the platter, Janeway took the chance to ask, "Are those really bacon and eggs?"

"Yes," replied Ro as she picked her cup up with the other hand. "And no, she's still asleep in her quarters. I couldn't get her up."

"Well, she'd better get up fast," grumbled Torres as she grabbed one of the cups of coffee Guinan was arranging on the countertop. "I don't want a sleepy partner when I'm killing dragons."

Ro looked at her in surprise. "She's going? I thought it'd be me."

"Well, the captain came to a decision to send the three of us," said Guinan, effortlessly scrambling a few more eggs while working the antique percolator she'd magically produced from somewhere. "Would you like anything with your scrambled eggs, captain? We have cheese, mushrooms or poultry. I'm not so sure about the poultry, but Sam Wildman assured me it's safe to eat."

"I'd just like my eggs plain, thank you. The poultry must be the Riccardian fowl Chakotay caught from the last stop we made…"

Guinan nodded and started to fry the bacon. "How about you, B'Elanna?"

Torres frowned and leaned over the counter. "Anything which gives it additional nutritional value… anything."

"Right now the most nutritional additive I have must be the bag of plant fertilizer under this cabinet, so I'll just add a dash of that."

Torres laughed. "Okay, I give up… I'll have cheese and mushrooms."

Guinan smiled in triumph and served Janeway's breakfast. "Yours will be ready in a couple of minutes' time."

Janeway picked up the warm plate. "I'm curious. There are a hundred and forty people on this ship. Do you really plan on serving each one individually? We'd be here all day."

"I'll do the best I can," said Guinan, cracking a second egg into her pan. "I'd rather stay here and cook all day than fight dragons, at any rate."

A corner of Janeway's lips quirked upwards at the mention of dragons. When Cass had mentioned their task the day before she'd initially thought it was a joke. Dragons, indeed! The thought came unbidden: _I wonder what Chakotay would have thought of this?_

Just the thought of Chakotay and all her missing crewmen brought a lump into Janeway's throat. She glanced at the floor to hide it, but Guinan seemed to have picked up on some subtle cue or the other as she vigorously stirred Torres' pancake. "Are you close to your crew, Captain?"

She shrugged in return. "When they're all that you've had for the past five years, you tend to get rather close to them."

Ro, who had found a table for them and put down her dishes, came sauntering back. "How close is close?" she asked, her eyes sparkling is mischief. She walked past them to the replicator on the other side and punched up a glass of orange juice.

Janeway and Torres exchanged a glance. "Varying degrees."

"Oh." Ro smiled wickedly. "Now _there's_ a euphemism if I've ever heard one."

Guinan scooped the eggs onto a plate and started on the bacon. The sizzling aroma wafted through the Mess Hall, and Janeway's stomach growled. "I don't get what you mean."

"Oh, come one," said Guinan, casting Janeway a smirking sideways glance as she flipped the bacon over. "Surely it can't be that amongst all the eligible men on the ship, there's not a single one to which you've developed a particular attachment to?"

Janeway shot her an annoyed glance over her plate. "Unfortunately, as captain of the ship, that's a luxury I don't have."

Guinan finished with the bacon and handed the plate to Torres, who was trying her best not to laugh. "That's just an excuse. Why, even Jean-Luc Picard had his own crushes every now and then."

At that moment Beverly Crusher elected to step in through the doors. "Did someone just ask for me?"

Ro let out a sharp snort of laughter which she stifled with her wrist. When Crusher gave her a strange glance, she shrugged and said, "Bad pun."

"What was that all about?" asked Crusher as she looked over the pantry counter. "Is that bacon I smell cooking?"

"That's breakfast," affirmed Guinan. "With scrambled eggs. Your order, please?"

"How about bacon _in_ scrambled eggs? I remember my mother used to cook it that way." Crusher turned and surveyed the gaggle of women standing with plates in their hands. "Are you all waiting for me to get my food? Or is this some strange _Voyager_ ritual?"

Jadzia Dax came in then, fresh and impeccable as usual, hair tied in a flouncing ponytail. "Hmm, that smells good," she said, as she headed over to the crowded space in front of the pantry. "Is there a queue here, or something?"

"No," replied Guinan. "It's scrambled eggs with bacon for breakfast. How would you like yours done?"

"Eggs with cheese, if you please." Jadzia glanced around. "Nery's still asleep?"

"She'll probably be here soon," said Ro. "Mission starts in two hours."

Guinan gave Janeway a glance. "There are a hundred and forty people on this ship. Do you really plan to stay and wait for all of them to get their food? You'd be here all day."

Janeway had to laugh at that. "You have a point. Come, let's go sit down and wait."

******

"She'll never wake up."

"Just wait. She will."

"Maybe we should poke her."

"It might hurt. Then she'll get mad at us."

"She won't. Just poke her a little bit."

Kira awoke slowly to the sounds of two young voices. Blearily, she opened one eye and found herself looking at two round faces glancing down at her. She recognized one: Molly O'Brien, Keiko's daughter. The other was a blond-haired girl, also about Molly's age, who looked vaguely Ktarian. Kira sat up.

"There," Molly said, "I told you she'd wake up."

Kira blinked to get the sleep out of her eyes. "How did you get in here?"

"We opened the door," said the blond child. "It must be malfunctioning."

__

Or Ro figured that I probably wouldn't wake to answer the door chime, thought Kira as she climbed off the bed and headed for the sonic shower. "Why are you in here then? Did someone send you to get me up?"

The two children exchanged a glance. "No."

"Hmph." Kira slid the shower door shut and began to undress. It was a wonderful feeling, taking a bath after a long, refreshing sleep. "So, why are you here anyway?"

"To help you with your mission," said the blond child.

__

Mission? Kira stopped and stuck her head out of the shower door. "What mission?"

"Captain Janeway decided that you'd go on the next mission," said Molly O'Brien. "To catch dragons."

"Great," muttered Kira, then paused. _Did I hear that right? _"Wait. Did you say dragons?"

Molly nodded. "Uh-huh."

Kira slammed the shower door shut. "Dragons don't exist!" I_t must have slipped my mind,_ she thought. Well, she did vaguely remember Cassandra saying something about dragons the night before, but she'd passed it off to her being delusional. Or maybe she was delusional right now as well. 

"They do," said the blond child. "We saw them on the holoprogram."

"It's a holoprogram," said Kira. "They're not real dragons." The sonic shower blasted at her, aggrandizing her mounting irritation. _This is a bad start to a day_, thought Kira. She stepped out of the shower as the cycle ended. "You can't get killed on a holodeck."

"We turned the safeties down, and we didn't even come close to being hurt," said Molly innocently. "Besides, Mommy says that holodecks make things like they're real."

"Q probably made them up." The blond child stuck her hand out. "I'm Naomi Wildman, by the way."

Kira shook Naomi's hand. "Hello, Naomi." She remembered now that that was precisely one child on board _Voyager_. It had to be her.

"We know how to get past the dragons," said Molly. "Quinlan showed us how."

"Quinlan?" asked Kira.

"Our friend," said Naomi. "She wanted to help us."

__

A holographic character, thought Kira idly. "And how did Quinlan say you had to get past the dragons?"

"With brooms!" said the two children brightly in unison.

"Brooms?" Kira laughed. "A measly broomstick isn't going to help much… the dragon would probably burn it or eat it."

"No," said Molly, "you ride the broomstick. And get past the dragons."

Kira gave her a look like she was crazy. "Riding a broomstick? What do you think I am, a witch?"

"Witches aren't the only people who can ride broomsticks," said Naomi. "Quinlan showed us how. First you have to call for the broom, so you hold your hand out like this-" the girl did a demonstration- "and shout '_Accio_ broomstick!' Then when it comes flying past you get onto it and kick off. You use your hands to steer it left or right. And it goes faster when you dive and slower when you pull up."

"It's very easy," said Molly persuasively. "Naomi and I could do it."

Kira smiled politely. "Is that something out of a children's book?"

Naomi nodded. "The Harry Potter series, from Earth's twentieth century."

"Thanks," said Kira to the two girls as she headed for the door. "I'll keep that in mind." _Dragons and broomsticks- what is the world coming to?_

******

A few hours later she was assembled with the other competitors in a large tented dome. Arms crossed tightly, Torres looked unconscionably nervous, scowling up at the white canvas ceiling, then pacing back and forth or scuffing the toe of her boot into the loosely packed dirt floor of the dome. She had taken off her outer jacket of her Starfleet uniform, leaving only the purple tank top and black leggings.

Guinan, in contrast, was her usual calm and composed self, standing tall in her dramatic wide hat and long purple robes. She caught Kira's eye and gave her a wide, dazzling smile that had Kira wishing that she, too, could smile like that. It wasn't just something a visit to the orthodontist could fix; it was just the whole way did it- the flair, the attitude. Still, Kira mused, she might like to try it some day. She could just imagine what the look on Bashir's face would be like: "Doctor, could you give a bigger set of teeth?"

A ten- foot tall version of Q strode into the tent, immediately drawing a hush from the crowd as he towered impassively over them. Kira rolled her eyes at the overstated dramatics, but otherwise said nothing. 

"Ah, my little friends, I see that you are all ready to do some hunting today? It was a very exciting blood sport back then in those days, those good old days. But-" he sighed in a wistful manner, "those were the good _old_ days. Dragon hunting, unfortunately, is now outlawed by the recent Protection Clause for Dangerous Endangered Creatures from the SPCC…"

"Which means we can't hunt them today, and thus the match will be cancelled," interjected Torres.

"You wish, my little barbarian lady." Q gave her a simpering grin. "I'm merely changing the aim of the game from dragon slaying to dragon _herding_."

"Dragon herding," repeated Kira in disbelief.

"Yes. Please don't tell me you don't know what herding is? Surely you Bajorans have some form of sheep as well?" He gave Kira sidelong glance. "If not, you might want to ask your captain for advice. I'm sure she has had a lot of experience herding those silly bleating Starfleet officers around."

At that, Torres' expression darkened, and it was none too happy to start with. "If you're not going to stop insulting me-"

"Oh, why bother being so touchy, my dear?" asked Q, as Torres prepared to reach down to toss her boot at Q's head. "Save your energy for the dragons."

Suddenly remembering the purpose of their Quest, Torres dropped her hand and docilely resumed her pacing, quietly muttering.

"Much better," said Q, and he continued. "There are six dragons in the arena. You will enter from the north entrance, and guide the dragons into the enclosure by the south arena in the shortest possible time. The winning team will be judged firstly on the total amount of time they take to complete the task, and more importantly, the number of team members they have left." He favored them with a false, toothy grin. "Now, come forward and take a number, please."

__

Great, thought Kira, _just great._


	5. Chapter 5

valkryies5 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Five)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

Torres wasn't in the most excellent of moods, but that was excusable, considering that her boyfriend had been kidnapped, she was on some crazy mission to herd dragons, and shed just been publicly insulted in front of a group of people who otherwise knew nothing about her. And all of it was the fault of the same egomaniacal superbeing. She trudged in a line with the other competitors down the dirt path leading to the arena. It was a sunny day outside on the planet they were orbiting, warm and balmy. They were in some kind of suburb or the other. The path they trod on was dusty and unpaved, but around them were concrete paths and carefully manicured gardens. The trees by the side of the dirt path provided some shade from the glare of the sun as Torres looked upwards, trying to see if she could identify the bright speck of reflected light that would be _Voyager_. She couldn't, of course.

The arena loomed large on the horizon, a vaguely ovoid, dome-topped construction which easily could have swallowed the whole of _Voyager_. The path towards it was nearly a kilometer, and Torres was feeling vaguely flushed by the time they'd reached the foot of the arena. The competitors were ushered into the waiting arena by the bouncers. The wrought iron gates clanged shut behind like the herald of the world's end. 

Their team was fourth on the list. Behind them there were another sixteen teams- it was a grueling competition. She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to think of the best way to direct a dragon without sustaining serious bodily harm. Could she talk to them? Would they understand? Would they be given anything to work the dragons with? She gazed around the polished gray marble of the waiting area, looking for inspiration, and found none. 

The first team was called, and the marble gates at the front of the waiting area swung open, revealing the interior of the arena to them. The sound and presence of the sheer mass of sentience out on the spectator stands hit Torres like a physical blow to the ribs.

And then she saw them.

They were huge, long and sleek and lethal, all polished scales and serrated edges. They ranged in a spectrum of dark colors from earthly brown to emerald green. They soared in the open space of the colossal arena, propelled by powerful beats of sinuous wings. Torres thought she smelt something quite like a wild animal, musky and mysterious. Dragons.

The first team was led into the arena and the gates slammed shut.

Kira gave Torres an alarmed glance. "Damn. They're bigger than I thought they'd be."

"Well," said Guinan cheerfully, "we're the fourth on the list, so maybe they'll be less hungry by the time they get to us."

"I doubt it," responded Kira. "There are six of them."

"Well, lucky us," muttered Torres. 

They sat down to wait.

Interminable hours later, it was finally their turn. Each team had been called in intervals of nearly one hour, testimonial to the scale of the task. Torres didn't know what had happened to the other teams. Probably in the dragon's stomachs by now, she surmised. _What a great footnote that would be on my memorial plaque, _she thought. _Born on Nessik, served on the starship Voyager, got eaten by a dragon._ Why? All because it was some sadistic omnipotent idiot's idea of a good time. _And he had the cheek to call _me_ barbaric!_

As she headed for the door she suddenly realized she wasn't quite ready to die yet, not here, and not now. There had to be some other way to get out of here alive… humans had been shepherding sheep since time immemorial, after all.

__

But then again, sheep don't bite, a little voice in the back of her head reminded her. 

They stepped into the sudden light and clamor of the arena. Overhead, the six dragons dove and spit angrily, agitated by their lack of freedom. The spectators were protected by a thin forcefield which glowed blue every time a plume of fire hit it. The floor of the arena was already scorched black in several places.

Torres was glad to see that the _Voyager_ crew had managed to secure front row seats. They waved down at her, some of them mouthing suggestions, but she couldn't make head or tail of any of them. But their moral support was better than nothing.

She assessed the dragons. Each one of them was four or five feet long, with a wicked spiked tail that they seemed to enjoy flicking back and forth. Their wingspan was gigantic- in excess of twelve feet, it's width spanning the whole of its body. Truth to tell, they looked like a cross between a pterodactyl and a plesiosaur, giant extinct creatures she remembered from her paleontology crash course at the Academy. With maybe a few crocodile genes thrown in._ Who knows, it may actually be possible to genetically engineer a dragon._

"Hello?" She called out. "Excuse me, would you mind moving to the side a little?"

The dragons ignored her.

Well, it had been worth a try…

Guinan, however, seemed to be on the same track as she was. "They have such passionate emotions… it's almost as if I could feel them. Deanna should be here, not me… she might have a better chance of reaching out to them."

"What do they want?" Torres asked, curious. "They're not hungry, I hope?"

"No… more like frustrated. They've all been captured and incarcerated here against their will, and people keep trying to force them to do things they don't want to."

Torres suddenly felt a deep sense of empathy with the dragons. "Well, maybe we should tell them that they're just prolonging both our miseries by being stubborn. If they get into the holding area without us having to goad them then we'll all be out of the same predicament faster."

"I don't think they can hear us… they're too far away. And I don't want to aggravate one down to the ground. We just might not survive it…" 

Torres racked her brains. "We've got to get up there. But how? On flying broomsticks?"

"Magic," affirmed Guinan.

Kira paused, then her eyes widened. "Can I apply the Suspension of Belief Clause over here?" she asked.

Torres recognized the phrase meaning that she had a suggestion which was more than slightly insane. "With Q around, anything's possible. Go ahead."

"About flying broomsticks… what if there was a way to get one?"

"Now you're talking Complete Suspension of Belief. How do you get a flying broomstick, Major?"

"I don't think it'll work… but… we're desperate…so. We put our hand out like this, and shout '_Accio_ broomstick!' And the broom will come magically flying out of nowhere."

Guinan gave Kira an odd glance. "Where'd you get that idea from?"

"Oh, some silly children's holoprogram called Harry Flotter, or the other. It _might_ work. After all, Q does have a perverse sense of humor…"

"I had no idea Flotter had a first name… but we don't have any other bright ideas, so… Guinan?"

"Ready whenever you are."

"So, hands out like this? Okay, here goes…"

"On mark… three… two… one… _mark_!"

"_ACCIO_ BROOMSTICK!"

The three women waited in suspense.

And nothing happened.

"Oh well," said Kira, shrugging, "I never really expected it to work anyway-"

Then Torres spied something on the horizon. "Look!" she exclaimed, as she pointed to the far end of the arena, where three blurs were heading towards them. 

Kira's eyes widened. "Are those really flying broomsticks?"

And they were.

The three incongruous objects stopped before the women, bobbing gently in the air at waist level. Kira let out a whoop. "It worked! I don't believe this! It _actually_ worked!" She grabbed one slender broom and clambered onto it. Torres and Guinan followed suit.

"Let's see if I remember how these things are controlled…" She kicked off and let out a cry of delight as the broomstick swooped upwards in the air. Taking her cue, Torres and Guinan followed her upwards, weaving in and out amongst the dragons. They were huge, fast like predatory birds and menacing like targs.

And mighty annoyed by this sudden intrusion into their airspace. They hissed at the three women, and dodged their approaches. At some subtle signal from the deep ruby red one, the six dragons converged on the three broom riders and attacked. 

Torres found herself besieged by angry fire from all sides. She yelled and dove downwards to avoid a huge infernal plume, racing towards the ground. The emerald dragon followed on her tail, folding its massive wings to drop behind her. She jerked the broom's handle upwards just in time before she collided with the ground, pulling into a steep decelerating ascent. The dragon followed, sweeping so close to the ground she heard its claws scrape the dirt floor of the arena. A swinging spiked tail swiped before her face, and she barely ducked under it in time, twisting the broom sideways so that the world tilted at a crazy angle. In front of her waited a dark ochre dragon with blazing onyx eyes. And the green one was still behind her. In desperation, Torres did a quick left turn and the two dragons nearly collided into each other. "Guinan!" she called out. "Try to talk to the leader! The red one!"

Unfortunately Guinan too was being trailed by two huge dragons, one a sapphire blue so dark it was nearly black, and the other a blazing maroon creature with a pair of magnificent long horns. The El Aurian was dodging them fine, but she couldn't maintain eye contact long enough to get their attention. Guinan needed a diversion. 

Heroically, and perhaps quite stupidly, Torres drove her broom between Guinan and the dragons. "You can't get me!" She taunted them.

This seemed to irritate the dragons, who broke off pursuit of Guinan and joined the green and brown dragons in hounding Torres. Guinan took advantage of the reprieve and dove off to help Kira, who was struggling with a fierce obsidian dragon and the monstrous red leader. 

Torres was only vaguely aware of Guinan's voice as she tried to reason with the dragon. The rest of her mind was focused on flying the broom. She thought of Tom and his dexterity at the helm of _Voyager_, and tried to emulate his movements, his tactics. The crowd cheered as she flew around the circumference of the arena at an angle nearly parallel to the floor. The wind whistled wildly through her ears as the broom accelerated and the space between her and the four dragons increased. The crew of _Voyager_ waved madly at her as she zoomed past, but she was clinging to the broom like a lifeline and couldn't wave back. 

Then, as suddenly as the attack had begun, it ended. With a mighty roar, the dragons broke off pursuit and headed after the red leader as it flew towards the open doors of the herding area. As the sixth dragon crossed the line, a green forcefield snapped into place. It was over.

As the crowd rose raucously to cheer and stamp, Torres raced back to the center of the circle to join Kira and Guinan. The former was saucer-eyed. "Diplomacy with dragons- don't even try."

Guinan smiled at Torres. "That was some flying, by the way."

She grinned. "Well, it had to be good… my life depended on it." A thrilling feeling bubbled up in her: they'd all done it, made it out alive, and within twenty minutes, no less! S_o Tom's the best starship pilot around, and I'm a star broom pilot._ She could live with that. Laughing, she grabbed Guinan's hand and pulled her to join Kira in the victory lap.

******

The excited mood in the Mess Hall was infectious. Their team had won, defeating the other teams by an embarrassing margin of forty minutes, twenty-seven seconds. Janeway shook each of their hands warmly as the team arrived. "That battle is going to go down in the history of dragon herding," she told them. "It's apparently a world record… and no-one's ever thought of using brooms fitted with antigrav units before. It was a brilliant idea, by the way… something out of a children's book, I surmise?"

Kira nodded. "It's from the Harry Flotter books. I've heard of the Flotter holoprograms, of course, but I never tried them. I will now, though."

Janeway laughed. "You mean Harry _Potter_. It was a series of children's books from Earth's twentieth century. The holoprograms are a different thing."

"Oh." Kira smiled at her mix-up. "It was Naomi's and Molly's idea."

"Very imaginative. I wonder who put the broomsticks there, though.."

"I know who did," said Naomi, sidling up to them. "It must have been Cassandra… Quinlan is her daughter, after all."

"Cassandra has a daughter?" asked Janeway.

"Shhh!!" whispered Naomi. "Don't tell… she's playing hide and seek with her parents. She told us about the broomstick bit."

Janeway smiled. "I won't… just as long as she keeps dropping hints."

"Okay. I'll tell her that." Naomi ran off to join Molly.

"Cute kid. She's how old, six?" asked Kira.

"No… three. She's part Ktarian… they develop faster in the early years."

"Ah. That explains it." Kira laughed and headed out to mingle with the celebratory crowd. 

Cass arrived, smiling at them. Over the past few days the Diocese had calmed down from being flustered and insecure, and now she carried herself with a calm air which nearly rivaled Guinan's. She held a sparkling gold ovoid object in her hand. "Congratulations," she said, handing Janeway the object. "This is your reward."

Janeway held the object up to the light. "What's this?"

"It's up to you to figure out," said Cass. "Do you want to hear about your next venue?"

Troi came by, and paused. "The next station?"

"Yes," replied Cass. "For the victors." She handed Janeway a clear piece of display plastic. "This is the clue for the next venue."

Janeway took the piece of plastic and studied it. On it were written a set of numbers and symbols which Troi couldn't make head or tail of. Yet Janeway seemed to recognize it. "It's a coding system of some sort…" She paused and consulted with Seven of Nine. The Borg drone seemed to understand the letters and pointed something out to Janeway. "There's a binary star system five light years from here," Janeway said. "Is that our next station?

Cass nodded, pleased. "I hope you have some really innovative thinkers in your team… it's on the fourth planet of the Cogita system. We call it ThinkQuest… a Quest of the wits."

Janeway and Troi exchanged a big smile. "We should have no problem with that."

"Excellent. I'd like to have the team specifications in a few hours."

"How many people on a team?" asked Troi curiously.

"Three… one for each thinking task you will encounter."

"Sounds simple enough." Janeway patted Cass on the shoulder. "I'll discuss it with my crew, and I'll let you know."


	6. Chapter 6

valkryies6 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Six)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

The weather on Cogito IV was warm, heated by the rays of two yellow stars. The current orbit of the planet took the two suns on a similar trajectory against the sky at almost the same time, so it was a brief burst of intense sunlight instead of a continuous drenching at normal power. Quite a raw deal, actually. Janeway hated to think of schools built on this planet- in the afternoon classrooms on Earth were invariably too hot by a few degrees, and they only had one sun. People living on this planet either were thermophilic in nature, otherwise they had teachers who were a lot more interesting than human ones.

Right now they were gathered in a stadium of some sort, a holographic environment whose center could be changed to various settings as need be. This ThinkQuest game was apparently a popular game amongst the Cogitans, but they'd never allowed offworlders to play before. As such, they were uneasy about hosting this portion of the Intergalactic Treasure Hunt, but there was little one could do against the wishes of a Q, else she wouldn't be here playing his ridiculous games in the first place.

The game was simple: each team had three members, each of whom had to complete a special task. A panel of six judges then assigned scores on who had accomplished the task to his or her best ability. At the end of the day, the team with the most points scored won the game. Janeway had elected to send Deanna Troi, Jadzia Dax and herself for this Quest.

Deanna was up for the first task. There were three other teams competing in the game, and theirs was the last one to take a turn. The Cogitan ambassador, a nervous thin man, guided the four participants to the center of the stadium while the rest of the team watched from the sidelines. "The first task," he said, rubbing his hands together restlessly.

Twelve holographic people appeared behind the ambassador, and simultaneously, a small sphere appeared in the ambassador's hand. "I have here in my hand a _nestin_ ball- it's a popular sport here- and a group of holographic helpers. The objective of the task is to get each helper to touch the ball with both palms in as short a time as possible." He tossed the ball to the first participant, a Tak Tak.

The first participant made them stand in a close line and pass the ball to each other fast.

The second one made them stand in two alternate rows facing each other and smack the ball to each other, volleyball fashion, down the rows in a zigzag fashion.

The third one made them gather around the ball in a circle and slap it with both hands in quick succession.

Now it was Troi's turn.

She stood considering the twelve helpers and the ball carefully, thinking hard. The previous attempts had all taken half a minute or so to complete, and she was determined to do it within a third of that time. So she closed her eyes and thought of the fastest way to get a ball to contact as many surfaces as possible.

She opened her eyes and smiled.

"Could you all cup your hands like this?" she asked the helpers, curling her fingers around the ball to demonstrate. The helpers complied, and she nodded in approval. Next, she made them line their cupped hands in a straight column, so that it became a pipe of sorts. Janeway smiled when she saw that, knowing what Troi was about to do. 

She held the ball over the column and dropped it through.

It took less than ten seconds to roll down the helpers' hands and hit the floor.

Troi raised her fist in victory.

The next task was Jadzia's. They were supposed to build the tallest and sturdiest structure possible, using just straws and adhesive tape. Jadzia gave Janeway an amused glance, as if to say, _four years in an advanced structural engineering course in Starfleet Academy and here I am, building with straws and Scotchtape_. Janeway hid a grin and watched the Trill's deft fingers twist and tape straws together. Applying the most fundamental rules of physics, Jadzia managed to build a pyramidal structure which, although not the tallest, managed to support the most weight put on by the Cogitans. As she returned to the sidelines Jadzia shrugged. _What creative thinking? Not like I invented the laws of physics._

Now it was Janeway's turn. She headed to the center of the field, knowing that their victory depended on her performance. The Cogitan ambassador smiled pleasantly at her. 

Then twelve huge bellowing animals appeared behind him.

Janeway's eyes widened as the Cogitan ambassador unclipped a long cylindrical object from his belt. He held it out to the four participants. "This is a forcefield marker," he said. "Applying it to the ground releases tiny field generators which will create a forcefield fence at waist-level in whatever shape you draw." He gestured to the monstrous beasts behind him. "Your task is to put these creatures inside a fence using the least number of field generators."

Janeway could barely keep her jaw from dropping. _What the-?_

The first participant, from the Tak Tak arranged the beasts, which looked like a cross between an ox and a rhino, in a tight circle and drew a circle around them.

The second participant forced them up on their hind feet and drew a smaller circle. 

The third participant, a huge hulking individual who might have been half giant, used sheer brute force to arrange the beasts into a pyramidal shape like Jadzia's straw structure, except they certainly were a lot more massive than straws. But his circle was still larger than the second participant's.

Janeway took the marker as the third participant handed it to her and swallowed a deep breath. What could she do to make the circle smaller? She considered the animals, each of which was about ten times her weight and probably twice that heavy. There was no way she was going to be able to lift one, much less stack them on top of one another.

__

Think, Kathryn, think, she chided herself. There had to be some other way. Cassandra mentioned innovative thinking. How could she apply creativity to this situation?

__

Creativity means thinking outside the box. My thoughts are inside the box. I want to get outside.

Inside the box. Inside the fence. Inside and outside, outside the fence-

Then it struck her. 

Praying that it was allowed within the rules, she bent down, and drew a tiny circle around herself. The forcefield sprang up, cutting her off from the rest of the world.

The Cogitan ambassador gave her a positively puzzled look. "I'm sorry," he said in that slow, patronizing tone one would use when addressing a particularly dim-witted chipmunk, "but I'm afraid you might have misinterpreted the aim of this activity. You're supposed to be putting the _animals_ inside the fence."

"And I have. Not only that, I have also put _you_ and everyone else here inside the fence as well. The only one who's outside of the fence… is me." She smiled sweetly at him, hoping he'd buy it. _Well, he did want creative thinking… and who's to define what's the inside or outside of a fence, anyway? It's just a damned boundary._

The Cogitan ambassador stared at her with his jaw open for a moment, then he smiled, holding his hand out to her. "Congratulations… I think you've just won the game."

******

Molly peeked out from the edge of the corridor. The coast was clear, no sign of Naomi or Quinlan anywhere. As quickly as her short legs would let her, she scurried across the length of the corridor diagonally and hid at the intersection of the two corridors.

"Ready or not, here I come!" Naomi's voice came ringing from further up the corridor. Molly stifled a giggle and moved down the corridor, away from Naomi's voice. There was a Jefferies tube access slightly further down, and Molly was going to use it as a hiding place.

She was so involved in sneaking away silently that she didn't see the pair of legs standing in the corridor until she hit them. Glancing up in shock, she realized it was her mother, hands on hips, holding a pair of gardening gloves and a flat spade in one hand. "Where've you been?" Keiko asked, annoyed. "I've been looking all over for you."

"I'm playing hide-and-seek with Naomi and Quinlan," Molly replied. "Naomi's looking for me, I have to hide."

Keiko let out a sigh and shook her head. For the past few days she'd found herself unusually busy despite the fact that she wasn't really part of the senior crew, and hadn't been sent down on any missions yet. _Voyager_ was in a mess, and Keiko, with rudimentary engineer's training, was happy to help. It was the first time they'd had peace on board this ship, and she had gone down to see their aeroponics garden. With all that, Keiko hadn't really been spending too much time with Molly, and she couldn't bear to blame the child for staying out of sight. _As long as she's safe… _"Be careful, okay?" she told Molly, figuring that she wouldn't be in too much danger playing with Naomi and Cass' daughter. 

Molly nodded and scurried down the corridor, ducking into the Jefferies tube system to hide. Keiko resumed her walk down to the Mess Hall, and ran into Naomi Wildman coming up the corridor. The half-Ktarian girl was flushed from running around. "Hi! Have you seen Molly?" 

Keiko shook her head, smiling. "I've no idea where she's gone," she said, "but you might try going further down this corridor." 

"Thank you." Naomi headed in the direction Keiko had pointed her to.

When Keiko had gone, Quinlan appeared beside Naomi as mysteriously as she always did. Quinlan was a small, dark haired and dark eyed child, with a preternatural calm which hid an insatiable spark of mischief. "Are all the grownups gone?" she asked. 

"Yep," replied Naomi. "All gone."

Quinlan grinned. "Good."

"Why do you always have to hide from the grownups anyway?" asked Naomi, curious. "Are you hiding from them because you're in trouble?"

"No. I'm playing a game of hide and seek with my mommy and daddy and someone might tell. That would take the fun out of everything," whispered Quinlan conspiratorially. "Let's go find where Molly is. I bet she's in that Jefferies tube over there."

Naomi giggled, went over to the said Jefferies tube and flipped it open. Molly was crouched inside. Naomi slapped Molly's arm, yelled "You're Q!" and scrambled away, laughing and dashing helter-skelter down the corridor.

Molly squealed and leapt out of the Jefferies tube in hot pursuit of the two girls. Giggling wildly the trio of crazed children ran like a group of…. Well, crazed children. 

Then abruptly Naomi and Quinlan stopped running. Molly ran into them from behind. "I caught you!" she exclaimed, wondering why they'd stopped in the first place. 

Then she realized Seven of Nine was standing in front of them like a pillar of imposing bronze. Molly gulped as the ex-Borg frowned severely down at them. "What are you doing?"

"Uh… running?" replied Molly timidly.

Seven afforded her a glance to let her know she was stating the blindingly obvious, as if Molly wasn't already aware of that fact. "That much is obvious," she said crisply. "I am more concerned with your reason for flight. I see little reason for such as you to be pursued while aboard this vessel."

"Well…" said Naomi, uncertain, and not really wanting to get her friend upset with her. And also not wanting to let the captain get any wind of their misbehavior. "We were only playing."

"Then the use of excessive speed in locomotion is not required, and in fact is inherently dangerous. You could have fallen, and someone could have been hurt."

"Do you always speak like that?" asked Quinlan. "You sound like a computer."

Seven seemed to notice the girl for the first time. "Who are you?"

"I'm Quinlan," said the dark-haired child. 

"Cass' daughter," added Naomi helpfully. "I think."

"We were playing Tag the Q," Molly said. "Want to join us?"

Seven faintly scandalized by the idea. "Running down corridors is a display of lack of decorum which does not befit a member of this crew."

The three girls glanced at Seven with wide round eyes. "Pleeaaaase?"

******

Janeway was on her way to the bridge when she was nearly run over by a gaggle of small giggling children running headlong through the corridors at warp speed. Thankfully, she was in too cheerful a mood to scold or even stop them. She merely smiled, shook her head and turned to continued on her way to the bridge.

Only to get run over by a not-so-small giggling ex-Borg drone.

"Seven?" Janeway was genuinely surprised. "What are you doing?"

Seven's eyes went wide and she looked more embarrassed than she'd ever been. "My apologies, Captain. I was merely… playing with the children."

Janeway laughed a little at that. "None necessary," she said flippantly. She stood up and brushed herself off. "Recreational games like these might be a… useful outlet for expression of pent-up emotions and energy."

The three children poked their heads around the corridor curiously. "Seven?"

Seven gave Janeway an uncomfortable glance, not wanting to disappoint the children, but not really wanting to break into another wild run in front of her captain either. 

Janeway waved towards the children. "Go ahead." Then she continued her way onto the bridge. 

The moment she was out of sight, Seven smiled, and darted down the corridor after the three children.

******

The doors to the bridge slid open, admitting the captain. Cass was already there, standing at Seven's usual station behind the fishbone arch. Kira was in the center, Ro at Tactical, Keiko at Operations and Torres at the elm. As she headed for the center seat Kira relinquished it to her, smiling. 

"Congratulations," Cass told her as she settled down in her seat. "You won… again." She handed Janeway a small gaming padd. "This is your reward."

Janeway leaned back to take it, then turned it over in the light, scrutinizing it. "It's a child's toy."

"It may come in useful later," Cass informed her. 

Janeway tapped at the padd and perused the contents. "The clue is here?"

"Yes."

"It's the blueprint for a building."

"So it is."

"How are we supposed to find one single building located within this entire quadrant?" Janeway gave Cass an imploring stare. "Do we look like walking architectural databases to you?"

"You have Borg on board," Cass reminded her gently. "If there's any race which qualifies as walkimng architectural databases, it is them."

"My resident Borg is currently on a rampage down a corridor chasing a trio of children. She is in no state to analyze these plans." Janeway smiled almost maternally. "I'll ask her later."

"Oh, by the way," said Cass, "You will no longer be able to choose who you want to be on the team for missions any longer. That responsibility now falls to me." She gestured to Ro. "For the nest mission you will be going in alone."

Ro spun to face her in stunned shock. "Me, go alone?"

Cass gave her smile which was both gentle yet acid. "Are you not up to the challenge?"

"Of course not," scoffed Ro, sounding much more confident that she felt. "It's just that… don't I need backup just in case something happens?"

"None are necessary," said Cass. "The next job is a simple theft."


	7. Chapter 7

valkryies7 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Seven)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

"Just a simple theft, sure, sure sure…" muttered Ro is in disgust as she snapped on a Starfleet hazard suit, strapping in the utility belt and goodness knows what other add-ons. "Make it sound so easy… like I rob the Ferengi Treasury everyday…" She was suiting up in Shuttlebay Two with Kira's assistance. She snapped the security ring of her left boot shut with more forced required than necessary.

Correlation with Seven and _Voyager_'s database had identified the building in their clue as one located in a snazzy downtown district on the largest continent of the planet they were in orbit around. This building was apparently what Janeway called a Smithsonian Institute. Ro wondered what this Smithsonian Institute was all about. Initially she'd imagined it to be an asylum of some kind. 

Cass told them that the alien species that owned this institute was unawares of their grand plans to rob it. Ro felt slightly guilty about intruding in upon them and stealing all their valuables for no reason other than that she was being coerced into doing so. It was ethically questionable and was probably going to leave the curators with one hell of an image of Starfleet, but what the hell. She was a Maquis with a Starfleet commbadge- image was something she was going to leave to Janeway to worry about. She was just here to do her job and get her life back together. She snapped on the other boot.

Kira tossed Ro a glove. "If you're going to rob the Ferengi Treasury, I want in too."

Ro caught the glove and pulled it on, locking it onto the sleeve of the hazard suit. "You can go first. Getting skinned alive in bits by plasma whips isn't exactly my idea of fun."

"I'm not the one in the hazard suit," Kira reminded her.

Ro fastened her other glove and fanned herself impatiently, roasting in the heat of the suit's thermal non-conductivity. "They probably called it a hazard suit because it's a hazard to health. Who designed these, a bunch of canines? It's totally non-porous!"

Kira laughed, and Ro scowled. "Don't laugh. When we have to swim through a pool of hydrochloric acid, we'll see who has the last laugh."

"I'm not going, remember?" Kira told her, smirking.

"I'll find a way to pay this back to you," Ro promised her as she finished up with the hazard suit. Transported buffers in order, everything online, her body raring to go- she was ready. "I'm done! How's the shuttle?"

It was a daring plan they'd come up with to rob the building. Since transports in and out of the building were not permitted, thus Ro had to arrive and leave by shuttle or by foot._ A handy little plot device, _she thought. She'd first have to create a disturbance by, say, setting the forest on fire. Then she'd cloak the shuttle with the newfangled Borg whiz gitzbits Seven had installed in, and then she'd infiltrate the building by the back left door. From then on it would be pure, plain simple science: her computer and the building's would battle it out and ultimately one would win- the one on her side, preferably. She'd break into the central chamber and steal whatever treasure was in there, and scoot as fast as possible. From then on it'd just tracing her path back to the shuttle, get back to _Voyager_, hit paydirt. It sounded so possible, but possibility and probability were two different things altogether.

Torres exited from the shuttle. "It's done," she told her. "Shall I tell the captain you're leaving?"

"What, and let her blame you for allowing me to hop on and steal a shuttle?" joked Ro. "That would better be suited to implicate Nerys. "

"Hey!" protested Kira as she Ro sauntered into the shuttle. "If you don't come back in that shuttle, I will personally hunt you down and mow you into the ground."

"Don't worry," she replied. "By that time I'll be rolling in latinum and hire a dozen top-flight asassins to dispatch you." With a laugh she settled into the flight chair, thinking that ludicrous situations were at least bearable if one applied humor to them.

Twenty minutes later, however, she was ready to take those words back. The situation she found herself in could be humorous in many aspects, but that didn't make it any more bearable or less dangerous. 

The first part of the plan had worked as predicted; she'd landed the shuttle, disturbed the area, and cloaked the shuttle. The next step of the plan, ideally, was infiltrating the building by the back left door.

Unfortunately, the plan had nothing to say about dogs guarding the back door.

Ro had never been one who was particularly good with animals, and the one standing before her didn't look particularly good either. A hulking, black-furred creature with a long, bristling snout, it snarled at her, hackles raised, the low growl emanating from his throat a deep-bellied, menacing sound.

Ro smiled weakly at the huge dog, and picked up a twig from the ground cautiously, holding it in front of her. "Nice dog… good dog." She held the gaze of the dog steady, then, with a lightning quick motion, tossed the stick over her shoulder. "Fetch!"

The creature snarled.

Oh well. No easy way out of this. 

Ro carefully walked around the creature, giving it a wide berth. Its eyes never strayed from her, staring at her in cold hatred. She neared the door, and snuck her hand out towards the handle-

The beast promptly lunged forward with a roar, and it was only by a combination of skill, foresight and sheer luck that Ro managed to avoid getting her arm bitten off. She yelped as the beast advanced on her, growling. Not a very good sign. Ro backed away from the door desperately, hoping it would call the creature off her.

It didn't.

Panicky, Ro thought of the single best way to get rid of this creature. It struck her mind.

With a barely orchestrated wave of her hand, Ro tapped the controls for her personal shielding device on her belt She disappeared from the world before the dog, hidden by the same Borg cloak which shielded their shuttle, and quickly skittered to a side.

The dog was highly stumped by the disappearance of the Bajoran. It sniffed the air where Ro used to stand, probably wondering where all these strange sentient beings kept being taken away. Taking advantage of the confused moment, Ro opened the back door and slipped inside. Too late the dog realized it had let its guard down, and it lunged at the door just as Ro slipped past it and latched it behind her. Pressed on the cold metal door, she heard and felt the solid thump of the dog crashing into the door, and smiled. Too bad for them. She snapped the cloaking field off.

Then she realized someone was poking a phaser into her back.

Damn.

"Turn around slowly, and no monkey business," a stern voice instructed her. 

Hands above her head, Ro did as she was told, trying to put on her best innocent face and not succeeding entirely. "Don't hurt me," she whined, "I was only running away from the big bad dog outside."

The man lowered his phaser rifle uncertainly. He was dressed in a khaki suit and had a tag attached to his left breast pocket that said "Security", although he handled the weapon in his hand like he'd never held a rifle in his life before. Ro was mildly annoyed. "You're holding your rifle wrongly."

"Pardon?" he looked nonplussed.

"You're holding it wrongly. Your hands are in the wrong position. How are you supposed to fire it like this? Space your hands together further apart," she replied with all the assurance of a mother chiding a child.

"Like this?" He fumbled with the weapon, trying to adjust his grip.

"No, like this." Ro reached out to snatch the weapon from his hands, and hit him on the head with it. He crumpled to the floor in a dazed heap.

"Dolt," muttered Ro as she stepped past him and down the corridor.

*****

On _Voyager_ 's bridge, the women cheered as Ro made her way down the corridor towards the room where whatever they were supposed to get was kept. Ro's hazard suit was linked up with _Voyager_'s computer so that they could see what was going on in the building. A small corner of the viewscreen was devoted to displaying a map overlay of the building's interior. 

In Engineering, Torres had hijacked one of the consoles and rigged it to display whatever was on the viewscreen as well, and she was too engrossed in whatever was going on to even monitor the warp core's power output. After the first two unpleasant encounters, she wondered what Ro was going to have to face up to next. She was worried, and wished that the rules hadn't stipulated absolute silence between the ship and the planet. She figured Ro would do a lot better with them helping her.

But then again, Torres had worked together with Ro on several occasions in the Maquis, and she knew how resourceful the Bajoran could be. Plus, she had a fairly formidable reputation as well. A good operative, if need be.

Yet she was uneasy.

Back on the bridge, Beverly Crusher felt nervous at Tactical, partly because she didn't want Ro to get hurt and partly because she hated sitting at the weapons console. She now felt a deep empathy with Keiko, who also had the unpalatable task of being assigned to maiming and destroying during their first task. If the unnamed race they were robbing now decided to take offense and attack the ship, they were probably doomed. So she sat tensely on the edge of the swivel chair- they had a swivel chair on the bridge!- and waited. She glanced at the viewscreen, where Ro was marching down an interminably long, gray corridor. _Please be careful,_ she implored the Bajoran silently._ The last thing I need here is the perfect opportunity to screw up._

******

__

This is easier than I thought, mused Ro as she breezed down a another corridor which branched off the first one leading to the treasure. A strange, bubbly kind of euphoria rose within her as she approached the door leading to the end of her quest. One ugly dog and one ugly man- Q must have gone soft.

She turned a corner, and realized that in actual fact, it was her mind that had gone soft. For what she saw spanning before her was no less than a spider's web of forcefields. It was actually more or less a hundred meters worth of laser generators embedded into the walls on both sides. Each generator on one side was connected to another on the other side, and this resulted in the formation of a thin monomolecular line that was both fine and deadly. Combined with all the other lines and lines arrayed down the fifty-meter stretch of corridor, it resulted in a tangled web of horrifying complexity.

Ro's eyes bugged out.

__

Now what?

She picked out a tricorder and began scanning. Great. Any movement in that area also triggered off a timer alarm which would sound if she didn't clear the area within thirty seconds. And considering that she'd just abused one of their members she was quite certain that the security officers wouldn't exactly be a welcoming party. So she basically either moved real fast and got her ass fried by lasers, else she moved nice and slow and got her ass fried by security forces. She thought that she preferred the lasers.

She quickly charted a courted a course through the laser stretch before her, memorizing it fully, rehearsing how she should move when frantically leaping through the lasers. She would have preferred having a practice run, but short of performing incredible on-the-spot aerial acrobatics, she didn't see any conceivable way of doing so. 

Ro said a brief but fervent prayer to the Prophets, then she leaped above the first laser, which was at waist level. From then on it was pandemonium unlimited.

Over and under. Over and under. Ro leaped across the first three lasers, ducked under the lowest one for the fourth layer, did a horizontal flip through a narrow space between two lasers, then dropped to the floor and barrel-rolled past five more layers of such lasers. Then she was up again, and hurdled over another laser, ducked under three more lasers, then more of the lateral spins through even spaced pairs narrowing the passage to a meter in the middle in what she tended to think of as Frisbee moves, grazing the end of her left boot on the upper boundary laser at the last pair. Then she took a deep a breath and took a nosedive through the last three hurdles, skimming through successively lower and smaller triangular apertures formed by three intersecting lasers. Then she hit the floor rolling, quite painfully, past a red line that marked the end of the fifty meters, turning the timer off. 

Breathing hard, she stood up, dusted herself off, and bowed deeply to an imaginary audience. "Wow, that was quite something," she muttered to herself. 

Then she turned, and saw that the doorway at the end of the corridor was blocked by a set of thin lasers, spaced closely to each other.

"Damn!" She walked over to examine the doorway. These laser were single sided affairs, all lined up against one side of the door. The spacing between each pair of lasers was barely thick enough for her to stick a finger through. Even without a scanner she could feel the heat they gave off. Her left boot was already a victim of cautery, its sole a syrupy goop which was just slowly hardening. She wasn't exactly interested in turning the rest of her body into a similar mess.

She walked to the other side of the doorway, hoping that a change of perspective would help her think though this one.

It didn't. The laser doorway still looked as unpassable as ever.

Damn. What had she been expecting anyway? Would a different angle of viewing the lasers have changed the way it was?

A different angle.

A thought suddenly struck her. Did she have a piece of glass anywhere? No matter. Punching up her transporter buffer index, she searched for a clear material of the largest refractive index and found one, a dense, heavy duty plastic which had higher tensile strength than even transparent aluminum. She procured a triangular lump of it, about ten inches high, then carefully slid it in front of the bottom few laser generators. 

It worked. The prism refracted the laser light at an obtuse angle, away from the median, leaving Ro with a space to crawl under. Which she promptly did. Then she just as carefully pulled the triangular prism out of the laser matrix and vanished it back into her transporter buffer. "I am a genius," she muttered to herself.

She was standing in a cul-de-sac of sorts. Walking through the other arched doorway, she guessed she didn't know what to expect.

Certainly not the absolute darkness she was abruptly plunged into.


	8. 

valkryies8 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Eight)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

On the bridge of _Voyager_ Crusher watched as the viewscreen abruptly turned pitch black. "What just happened?" she asked. 

Troi looked up from Ops. "Captain, we've established contact with Ensign Ro."

Crusher was vaguely interested. "A help line… This must be the hardest part of the mission."

"Contact her," Janeway instructed Crusher.

Troi complied. A few moments later a scratchy connection was established.

"_Voyager_." Ro's voice was whispered, as if speaking from very far away. "I'm in the middle of this darkness. I can't get any bearings. Even my tricorder's not giving out light. Where am I?"

Crusher glanced up at the map superimposed on the top right hand corner of the map. Ro was in the middle of a square marked with a red cross. "You're there, where the treasure is supposed to be," replied Janeway. "What can you see?"

"Nothing," snapped Ro. "There's some kind of visible-light damping field at work here," she said.

"Let's see if it works for EM waves of longer wavelengths," Janeway said. "There's an infrared imager with your hazard suit- can you activate it?"

There was a pause, then, "I think so."

Immediately the viewscreen changed from a black abyss to a plethora of bright colors, like someone had dropped an artist's palette on it. "Ouch," said Ro, commenting on the swimming psychedelic colors before her eyes. "I think I'd prefer the darkness."

Janeway ignored her grumbling and turned to consult with Kira. Nervously, Crusher leaned back against her chair at Tactical, wishing that it weren't so damn isolated from everyone else on the bridge. She wanted to talk to Troi, but the Betazed was at the other end of the fishbone arch. Instead she focused on the viewscreen, trying to interpret the shifting colors. "The warmer colors- red and yellow- are probably walls. Try to avoid them, and move towards the blue ones."

Ro took her advice and walked towards a patch of blue and green. Then she let out a yelp. "I've run into a wall. It's made of metal."

"Sorry," was all Crusher could think to say.

"Turn around, Laren," said Jadzia from helm. "What do you see there in the center of your field of vision?"

"I don't know. It looks like a rod of some kind. I'll try moving closer." The picture on the viewscreen changed dizzily. Then, "I can feel it and pick it up. I can feel jewels of some sort embedded in it. It's made of metal, I think, and quite heavy. I'm betting that this is what I'm supposed to get."

"Quite correctly deduced," said Cass calmly, perched on the fishbone arch, the first thing she'd said all the time Ro had been on the planet. "Take it and try to leave as fast as possible."

"I don't know where the exit is. I turned around quite a number of times in the darkness."

"What's that moving in the corner of your vision?" asked Crusher in alarm.

Ro looked, and she didn't like it either. "I don't know… but it looks like it has two heads."

"That's because it does," Cass informed her. "Get out of there."

Ro's voice rose slightly in annoyance. "That's easy for you to say! I can't see a bloody thing except for the two-headed monster!"

"Commander Troi, can you lock on to her signal?" asked Janeway.

"I can."

"Beam her back to the shuttle."

"Beaming…"

The viewscreen was changed back to normal vision again, showing the interior of a shuttle. "We've lost contact with her again."

"No matter," said Janeway. "She should be coming back soon."

Something moved in the field of vision of the imager transmitting to _Voyager_ , and Crusher belatedly realized Ro was waving the prize she'd picked up to show them what it was. She held a breath as she beheld it.

It was an intricately formed scepter with rubies embedded in it.

******

Ro was tired. Really, really tired. She sat slumped in her seat in the briefing room of _Voyager_, doing nothing but rubbing her temples and wishing she could get to bed. But then again, she'd just about been through the worst kind of hell she could think of, and the fact that she was still in one piece was testimony to how hard she'd tried to succeed in it. Yet none of the other crewmembers seemed to be taking note of her discomfort, instead paying more attention to that blasted scepter she'd swiped.

Kira wielded the scepter in one hand, feeling its weight and heft enthusiastically. Ironic. Ro thought that of all people she would be the one who'd sympathize most with the feeling that one was suffering from a severe sleep deficiency, but the Bajoran major was just about as enthused as everyone else about the scepter. She held it up to the light, as if to see it better.

It was a magnificent object , to tell the truth. It was shaped like a stalactite made of polished white marble and porcelain, fragile yet full of power. Dark red rubies encrusted its sides and carvings, and a single huge one occupied the center of the scepter, glowing with a certain kind of radiant energy. Set along the length of the scepter were grooves serving as handles. Preliminary scans of the object had yielded little, except for a few unusual emissions of quantum packets associated with Prophet Orbs.

Cass was there, taking the scene in with a knowing, sanguine smile. She caught Ro's eye, and somehow Ro felt compelled to smile back to the blue deepness in her eyes. After all this days, she guessed she still hadn't figured the strange Diocese out, and she was willing to bet five years of sleep that most of the crew hadn't been able to do so either.

Janeway passed the rod around the oval table for everyone to see. When it finally reached Keiko, the botanist gazed at it for a fair amount to time. Then she let out a small cry of discovery. Pointing to the inside of the grooved handle, she said, "Look at that! There's an inscription on it."

"Looks like we've found our next clue," said Torres, smiling.

"That's nice," muttered Ro, and that was as far as she got before she hit the table, fast asleep.

******

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

They'd followed the instructions on the scepter, to the very letter. They'd found the planet they were supposed to be on. They'd landed on the planet. They'd done everything right.

So where the hell was the Quest they were supposed to be completing?

For _Voyager_ had landed on what was a Demon-class planet, no less. They didn't venture out to the surface, not wanting to face those harsh conditions unless they were really forced to. When they'd approached Cass for an explaination, she'd given them a perturbed look and muttered something about logistical problems.

Then she disappeared, leaving the crew stranded with nowhere to go.

So Janeway had called for a brainstorming session, and the senior crew now gathered in the briefing room. They were not so much worried as frustrated, an emotion which seemed to be going around in abundance these days. They'd all been plucked out of their relatively normal lives and plunged into this living nightmare, and they all wanted to return to that normalcy as fast as possible. _After this, I'm never going to complain about being in the Delta Quadrant again,_ thought Janeway dryly as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on the table so that she could rub her temples in peace.

Kira was repeatedly smacking her fist into the palm of her hand, Ro was drumming her fingers on the table, Torres spoke with a perpetual growl, Crusher was agitatedly twisting one lock of her hair into a tortured cord, Troi was chewing on her lip, Jadzia was grinding her teeth and Seven seemed to be intent on crushing the padd she held. Even the normally implacable Guinan and the incredibly good-natured Keiko seemed to be teetered on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Janeway had the feeling that if anyone tried to do anything funny in the room at that moment, he likely wouldn't live to regret it.

Q, with his perfect timing, chose that moment to appear, standing in the middle of the room right on the table.

As Janeway expected, he immediately got it from them. He was lambasted on all sides by angry accusations and even angrier rants as everyone in the room more or less stood up to rail at him. Cornered on all sides, Q raised his hands helplessly to ward of his ladies' affections. When that still didn't work, he snapped his fingers and silenced everyone in the room with his powers, so that even though they continued yelling there was no sound. They stopped mid-sentence as they realized what had been done to them.

Pushed past breaking point, Torres leapt onto the table and knocked Q over, snarling. With an inaudible cry of delight, Kira applauded her and joined her on the table, fists raised. Whooping silently, Ro joined in. Janeway realized that such uncouth displays of violence were unseemly for Starfleet officers, but at that point she wouldn't really care if they'd been hacking Q into bloody chunks. Besides, technically none of them were Starfleet officers, although that case would be made moot if she gave in to temptation and joined them on the table, an action which she found very hard to resist doing.

"Ladies, ladies, please!" Q pleaded with them as Torres tried to sink her teeth into his neck. "I know how much you adore me, but you don't really have to be so vehement in your idolatry…"

Janeway bit back a stinging riposte and instead asked, "What is it you want-" She stopped mid sentence as she remembered that her vocal cords weren't working as well as they should.

With a wave of his hand Q put his three assailants back into their seats. Then, with a flash, he was behind her. "Well, I know what you must all be thinking of now… that I screwed up major, sent you to the wrong planet and gave you all the wrong clues, the whole kit and caboodle. Well, let me tell you this. I'm Q. I don't screw up." He paused as if in thought, then snarled in frustration. "Alright, I'll admit! I _did_ screw up! That's why I'm here!" He shot them all a dark glance. "But I didn't mess up on this Treasure Hunt. I had everything going on according to plan, everything perfect, until…" He paused, and he didn't seem quite comfortable with letting on with his new secret. Then he sighed, waved his hand as if to indicate that he was tossing his dignity, the whole nine yards of it, to hell. "My daughter went missing."

__

Daughter? "I didn't know you had a daughter," mouthed Janeway silently.

Q passed it off. "New addition to the family." He sighed melodramatically. "All I did was take my eyes off her for ten seconds, and she was gone!" Agitated, he paced up and down the room. "If my wife finds out, the lashing you three tried to give me"- he gestured to Kira, Ro and Torres- "would be a blessing." 

Guinan smiled sardonically, and to the surprise of everyone present, spoke. "Looks like you got yourself into a spot of domestic trouble."

Q's expression darkened for a moment, then he wiped it away with a manic grin. "In the interest of self-preservation, then, I have changed the nature of this Quest a little bit. You, you and you"- he pointed to Crusher, Keiko and Seven- "have just been appointed to find my daughter." Then he was gone in a flash of light.


	9. 

valkryies9 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Nine)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

The trio of women made their way through the corridors of _Voyager_, muttering amongst themselves. It was a mark of how detestable Q was that the three women were given a wide berth by others who considered their powers too dark to control and hence dangerous. Stuff and, in every sense of the word, nonsense, of course. Who did the others think they were, the Sisters Three? Just because Q had personally handpicked them to find his precious daughter didn't mean that they had extra powers or any advantage over anyone else. Q hadn't even given them any extra information to speak of, dammit! So much for fair play.

Crusher was feeling uneasy. How in the world were they going to find one small girl in all the entirety of the galaxy? And why had Q picked the three of them, saving the fact that neither of them had gone on any missions as yet? There were more to go. There must have been some connection.

Keiko realized it first. "We all have experience in dealing with small children," she said. Gesturing to Crusher, she said, "Both of us are mothers. And Seven… well, she does seem rather close with Naomi."

"Q probably realized he was too inept to handle his daughter and asked us to do it in place for him," said Crusher. "I bet she's throwing a tantrum and hiding from him."

"Well, at least now we understand the situation," said Keiko.

"I fail to see how understanding the situation would help us in finding a starting point for our search," Seven pointed out. "There are many places an omnipotent child could use to hide from her parents."

"Well, then we'll start searching from the most obvious ones then," said Crusher. "Black holes, planetary nebulas, star clusters… it shouldn't be too hard. We do have long range sensors, of course, and an angry omnipotent child is bound to produce some sort of anomalous readings."

"You hope," retorted Seven.

******

By dinnertime the next day, however, it seemed that Seven might have been right after all. Extensive long-range searches had yielded nothing, and, as Keiko aptly put it, "Now what? Are we going to spend the rest of our lives scouring the galaxy scanning every dust-cloud for anomalous readings?"

To which Crusher had tartly replied, "Q will likely get murdered by his wife first."

Most of the women were half-wondering if that was a bad thing after all. Sweet justice for the fairer sex.

Now they were seated together around one of the long tables in the mess hall, having dinner together. Just as they were about to begin eating, however, Naomi came up to them, carrying a small tray of food. "Can I sit here?" She asked Seven, gesturing to the empty seat beside her.

Seven nodded, and Naomi settled in happily.

"What I don't understand is, if Q is so all-powerful, why doesn't he search for his daughter by himself?" Jadzia was asking, tucking into her tomato soup. 

"He's probably already tried that and turned out nothing," replied Guinan.

"Or he's afraid to make it obvious to his wife," suggested Keiko, "so he sends us so-called pathetic mortals to help him."

"He must be really desperate," mused Kira, spearing a potato chunk with her fork.

"No doubt about that," laughed Torres. "I'd spear my husband if he ever lost my daughter like that."

"Poor Tom," giggled Naomi, twirling spaghetti around her fork as she spoke.

"Who's Tom?" asked Ro.

"Her boyfriend," replied Naomi, shoveling in the spaghetti.

"Boyfriend?" Ro cast Torres a playful glance. "You didn't tell me you had a boyfriend!"

"You didn't ask!" said Torres, laughing. "And even if you did… I'd have told you to stop putting so much morbid interest in my personal life."

"So, when's the wedding?"

"Keep quiet, Laren!" Torres put her hands on her hips and tried to cast Ro a withering glance, but the effect was ruined by the fact that she was struggling to maintain a straight face, and not succeeding much.

"So, that's what you meant by 'varying degrees', hmm?" asked Guinan, a half-smile playing on her face.

Janeway suddenly realized everyone more or less had his or her attention focused on her. "Is there something wrong? Why is everybody looking at me?"

"So who's the lucky man?" asked Kira with a wicked smile of her own.

"There isn't one," replied Janeway, absently stirring her soup aimlessly and not looking up.

"I have noticed that, over the past few minutes, the ambient temperature in our cheeks has risen by one point two degrees Celsius," Seven reported crisply. "You are blushing." It was not a question.

"I'm not." Rapidly drinking the soup.

"Oh, come on," said Crusher evilly. "We weren't born yesterday. Do tell us. Who's he?"

"She's in love with Chakotay," said Naomi smugly, twirling more spaghetti.

Janeway spluttered on her soup. "_Naomi!_"

Naomi looked up at her innocently. "But it's true, isn't it? That's what Tom and Harry said."

Janeway put her hands on her hips and cast a withering glance at Naomi with much more success than Torres. One had a feeling that Tom and Harry weren't going to come away alive from their next meeting with their captain.

Troi brushed Janeway's mind gently, probing the storm of conflicting emotions the girl had just stirred up: embarrassment, indignation, denial, and a touch of guilt. _The girl has a point, doesn't she? _She asked her silently.

Janeway turned and caught her gaze, and the two shared a confidential smile. _Please, don't say anything._

I won't.

Ro, seated beside Torres, had inhaled her food so hard she was now coughing and spluttering uncontrollably. Torres thumped her solidly on the back. "Chakotay of all people-" she started to laugh, and was promptly engulfed in a fit of coughing again.

Janeway glanced sternly at Naomi. "Naomi, I suggest you go to your room and play with the other girls." _Before I throttle you, at any rate._

Naomi frowned. "Molly's asleep, and Quinlan's hiding again. I'll get bored."

Janeway was about to offer alternatives to this when Keiko suddenly sucked in a deep breath. "Quinlan!"

"She's… hiding?" Crusher asked Naomi.

"Yep. She's always hiding. She says she's playing a game of hide-and-seek with her parents."

"And she's Cass' daughter?" asked Keiko intensely.

"I think so. I don't know. She only appeared when we started to do all the Quests, and she helped us with the dragon herding. She knows a lot about the game. I think because Cass told her everything."

"No…" said Crusher. "She knows so much because she isn't Cass' daughter. She's Q's daughter."

******

"I don't know where she is!" Naomi protested as Janeway, Crusher, Keiko and Seven frog-marched her down a corridor. "I told you she was hiding!"

"Where does she usually hide?" Crusher asked her.

"I don't know. It changes every time. Jefferies tubes, warp cores, where ever she likes!" Naomi looked frustrated. "Even Molly and I can't find her all the time."

"Is there any way we can coax her out of hiding?" Janeway asked.

"You mean, to bait her?" Keiko frowned.

"I have observed that children of that age enjoy playing games with their peers. Perhaps we could entice her out of hiding by organizing a game of her liking with Naomi Wildman and Molly O'Brien," suggested Seven.

"Tag the Q!" said Naomi brightly. "She loves playing tag."

Janeway suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. "Is there anything that she likes which doesn't entail you running around the ship like madwomen?"

"Well…." Naomi thought hard. "There's hide and seek."

Crusher managed to swallow the _Duh!_ which she was tempted to yell. 

"Anything else?"

Naomi stopped and pondered for a very long time. Finally she shrugged. "She mentioned a game called Counterstrike once… I don't know what it's about."

Seven inclined her head in thought. "It was a program on the padd which Cassandra provided us. A two-dimensional multiplayer combat game."

"Multiplayer combat game…" repeated Keiko, not liking it. "It sounds extremely violent."

"It probably is," said Naomi. "Quinlan likes shooting people on the holodeck."

Keiko looked horrified. "Did you and Molly join in as well?"

"Nope. We were hunting dragons. She shot all the silly knights."

"Hunting dragons. How very peaceful," said Crusher.

Keiko scowled. "I'm not sure if this Counterstrike plan is a good idea. Maybe we should let them play tag."

"And have them tear down the ship?" Janeway shook her head. "Virtual violence is always better than real-life violence."

"Not when it gets too excessive!" protested Keiko.

"How excessive can it get?" asked Crusher incredulously. "It's only in two dimensions!"

Keiko was about to protest when a voice of silk and honey spoke from behind them. "I'm afraid the others have a point, Keiko. There's no better way to bait this child than to have her friends sit down and play something she likes without her."

The women whirled to look at Cass. The Diocese smiled and tucked her thick golden hair behind delicately pointed ears. "I know this child and her temperaments. The padd will be of great help to you." She headed towards the four women. "Trust me."

A smile spread across Janeway's features. "You're helping us, aren't you?"

Cass shrugged fluidly. "How could I not? Q is such a boar to victimize you like this."

"Then you planned all these? His daughter running away? All the little rewards?" Crusher asked her.

Cass smiled at them. "Let's just say that I prepared myself well for the task. Although I must admit that dealing with you for the first time proved to be quite traumatic. I wasn't really enthusiastic about forcing all of you to subjugate to Q's every whim and fancy, but I'd promised him help, and I couldn't just ignore the plight of friends. So here I am, caught in the middle." She sighed.

"Q is a great oaf," muttered Crusher in a tone which reminded Seven a lot of Torres.

"I must say that I agree," said Cass sotto voce, laughing softly. She raised her hand, and the padd she had gifted them with in the Quest before the last appeared in her palm. "Shall we begin?"


	10. 

valkryies10 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Ten)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

A two-dimensional game looked deceptively easy, though Keiko several hours later as she plowed through the computer-generated landscape. It was galling, to say in the least. She was being trumped by a three year old kid- none other than Naomi Wildman. She wondered briefly if it was because younger children responded more aggressively to the stimulus of snatching things from others. Certainly they were very possessive.

The game had been downloaded into _Voyager_'s primary systems and had been set up in Astrometrics, which possessed a suitably large viewscreen as well as multiple consoles for different players. The viewscreen had been split into four sections, each for every player. The game was controlled by a few buttons: one moved the player left, then another moved her right, then there were those for forward, backwards, jumping up, crouching down, climbing, and of course, firing. The controls took some getting used to, and Keiko was still extremely clumsy with them, while people like Naomi were navigating with ease, and would probably still be able to beat Keiko with one hand tied behind her back. There she went again- ramming into another wall. Damn.

The game of Counterstrike, adapted to suit twenty-fourth century environs, followed a simple basic principle: grab as many objects onscreen as possible while blasting your enemies into oblivion at the same time. The environment they were playing in was nothing more comforting than a dark, green-hued Borg cube. Armed with nothing but an imaginary phaser rifle and lots of gut, Keiko fought and threaded her way through the dark oppressive corridors, shooting with wild abandon at anything that moved and grabbing anything that didn't. There were no rules, no strategies, and no obstacles to be taken into consideration. Just plain, pure mindless violence. How hard could it get?

Crusher's Bajoran persona stepped into view, and on instinct Keiko went into fry mode, attacking the good doctor with wild abandon. In the fierce firefight between them that ensued, Keiko somehow or the other won, leaving Crusher a smoking pile of flesh on the floor. Keiko refused to take unseemly pleasure in the downfall of her comrade, but the feeling which swept through her, not quite euphoria and not quite adrenaline rush, was intoxicating. It was a good way to release tension, she figured, and she envisioned Miles and herself spending hours on the holodeck with a holoprogram like this to shoot Quark up every time the supercilious Ferengi got on their nerves. It would be fun… just as long as no-one else found out.

Keiko navigated a sharp bend in a corridor and rammed headfirst into another wall. 

Well. Some things would have to be worked out first.

Naomi's Klingon character came into view.

__

Not again, groaned Keiko. Other than being way better than Keiko at aiming and firing, Naomi seemed to have quicker reflexes and besides, Keiko was reluctant to shoot at a child, no matter that the child was posing as a fully-armed Klingon warrior and had the distinct advantage over her. It went against her basic principles to bully a child.

Naomi, however, had no such qualms about bullying her. _Bam bam bam bam_. In a few seconds it was all over, and she'd been killed by a precocious three year old… again. Damned embarrassing.

Fortunately she wasn't the last in points this game. That dubious honor belonged to -hah!- Seven of Nine. So much for Borg efficiency… and this was supposed to be her home turf, for goodness sakes! Janeway, standing by the side, observing them, seemed to be highly amused by the results of the game, more so because of Seven's frustration at her inability to navigate through a two-dimensional landscape with ease. 

They'd been at this game for hours, thought Keiko, rubbing her aching eyes in a brief reprieve. Where the heck was Quinlan? She should have shown up by now. She shot an anxious glance at Cass, silently asking, _When is this going to end? After a day of callous bloodshed, I'm ready to fall asleep at my console. Where's the girl? _

Cass made a deferential movement, as if to say, _Patience, my friend_. A pretty hard thing to do with an adrenaline supercharge running through one's body and a huge phaser rifle- imaginary, but still a phaser rifle- in one hand. Then Cass gestured to the viewscreen, and said, "Behind you."

Keiko whirled just in time to see Seven blast her into another smoking pile of organic matter. Damn.

Then Quinlan appeared on the scene, pouting slightly. "Nobody invited _me_ to play," sulked the dark-haired omnipotent child as she strode across Astrometrics.

"That's because we couldn't find you," said Crusher mildly as the child approached her with interest. "Want to take my place?"

Quinlan fell for it, hook, line and sinker. "Okay." She took the controls from Crusher, who gratefully retired from the scene. Quinlan, for all her relative youth, was a diabolical player, and it wasn't long before the rest of them were all wallowing in the dust behind her. Quinlan quickly became totally absorbed in the game, her face rapturous.

Then a hand clapped down on her shoulder. "Where have you been all this while?" Q demanded, annoyed.

Quinlan looked up from her game, alarmed. "Daddy?"

Q swung the little girl up onto his hip and frowned down at her. "Didn't Daddy ever tell you not to wander off by yourself? What if bad men had hurt you when Daddy wasn't looking?"

"At this point, _bad men_ is a relative term," muttered Crusher dryly.

Q ignored her and continued his lecture of his little daughter, who gave him the most guileless I'm-a-good-little-girl look she could manage. "Do you know how worried we got?"

"Worried about the child, or worried about being unmercifully slaughtered by your wife?" asked Janeway quietly. 

"Keep out of this, Madame Captain, or I'll remove your locution skills which I so kindly restored to you," he said warningly. Then he turned back to the child. "Well. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Quinlan smiled up at him. "But I was on _Voyager_ all the time, Daddy. Safe here."

"Safe?" Q clutched his chest in mock horror. "In the care of these… mortals?" 

"One of whom, if you'd recall, is your self appointed son's godmother," murmured Janeway.

Quinlan grinned. "See?"

Q shot Janeway a dirty look. "When it finally gets through to your thick head to settle down and spawn with that primal Tattoo Boy you have there… I'm going to be there _every_ step of the way and spoil _every_ lecture you give to your children by inserting stupid typical mortal remarks such as those you just said, and see how you like it!" 

Remembering their recent dinner conversation, Crusher unsuccessfully tried stifling her giggles with her wrist, and Keiko mirrored her amusement. Naomi nudged Seven with a mischievous grin.

The glare Janeway gave Q at that moment would have melted the bulkhead had Q not been there.

"Well," said Q hastily, getting the feeling that he might have swapped one axe-murderer on his tail for another, bundled Quinlan into his arms and made as if to leave. "Since you've completed this Quest, you'll find the locations and specifications for the next Quest stored in your ship's database."

"And what about our reward for this Quest?" asked Crusher.

"Why, you get my undying gratitude, of course," said Q with an annoying grin. "What more could a mere mortal like you ask for?" Then he was gone in a flash of light.

Crusher stared at the empty spot where he once was with a scowl. "You should have killed him while you had the chance to," she told Janeway in irritation.

******

Their next destination was the planet Thymus in a sector mere light years away from where they were supposed to be participating in some grand obstacle course. While Deanna plotted a course towards the planet, Kira tried peering over Cass' shoulder to see the instructions for the Quest. "Who's being sent down for this one?" she asked, keeping her fingers tightly crossed.

"Captain and first mate," said Cass breezily.

"Damn," swore Kira.

******

The planet Thymus defied all descriptions astronomers could choose to give it. Surface conditions, core/crust composition and standard orbit all classified the planetoid as M-class, but the impression given by the tumultuousness of its red skies was that one would have an easier time weathering Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

Janeway and Kira beamed down alone to the set coordinates on the planet's surface. It looked just as bleak on the surface as it had looked in orbit. The skies were dark red, overcast, and a dull reddish-gray-yellow light, the kind that permeates the sky just before a mid-afternoon downpour, lighted the world. The horizon curved into infinity in the distance, a flat featureless plain of dull reds and browns, parched and dried. No vegetation whatsoever. The air was hot and oppressive. If anything, the planet resembled a cross between Vulcan, Qo'NoS, and Mars. 

"Welcome to the infamous Ras Klot obstacle course," said a simpering, sniveling voice from beside them. Janeway and Kira turned to look at the owner of the voice and were rewarded with the sight of a small, slightly hunched old man with wrinkly dusk-colored skin, disheveled wispy white hair and generally oily manner. He smiled at them, all yellowed teeth and beady eyes. "I'm Dalmar, and I will be guiding you through the course." He leered at Kira, who was suddenly reminded of the owner of a certain Ferengi-infested bar. 

She shuddered, then snarled at Dalmar, "We'll do fine without a guide, thank you. The maze can't be that hard."

He laughed, a high pitched hyena laugh which gave Kira shivers all over her back. _Eww!!! _"Who said anything about mazes, dear? And who said anything about a guide through the course? I'm only here to guide you through the _rules_ of the course."

"Then hurry and be done with it," Janeway commanded him.

Dalmar favored her a false grin, and shrugged. "Have it your way. For people in a hurry, it's all very simple then. All you have to do is to get both teammates to the end of the obstacle course together, by hook or by crook! Got that?"

"Yes. And?"

A pregnant pause.

Very pregnant.

"Well, go _on_…" prodded Kira, rotating her hand in a circle in annoyance. "What else?"

Dalmar shrugged. "That's it!"

"That's _it_?" asked Kira in disbelief. "Just get them to the end by hook or by crook?" She gave Janeway a quick glance. "Sounds pretty easy to me."

"Ah… but listening and doing her two different things," he said cryptically. "Come with me, I'll give you your equipment."

******  


"This is stupid," grumbled Kira, clipping the utility belt they were provided with to her waist. They were in a small wooden enclosure with a intricate bronze door and a ceiling which opened to the dark, tumultuous red skies. "Which kind of idiots put their captain and first officer on the same life-threatening mission?"

They had trekked a least a mile to the decrepit shack where Dalmar had given them the utility belts, then another half-mile to this holding room before the course began. Kira had tried looking over the edge of the hut to see what the course looked like, but Dalmar had assured her that it was useless. The whole course was kept within a sight-baffling shield around its perimeter. The only way to look at it without entering it would be to fly tens of thousands of feet up in the air, a skill that Kira, for all her merits, had yet to master. The arduous trek had shortened her temper considerably, and the grit which had gotten tracked into the inside of her boot was irritating her. Annoyed, she tightened the utility belt.

"We don't have a choice," Janeway reminded her as she mirrored her movements. "Don't worry. I think we'll both get out of this alive."

"You hope," Kira, as the massive doors in front of them swung open.

They took two steps outwards and stood in the middle of a vast open space, illuminated by the reddish light from the crimson sky. Kira stared at the empty court. "What are we supposed to do, precisely?" she asked. 

Janeway shrugged. "Walk across."

"It's supposed to be an _obstacle_ course. Where are the obstacles?"

"Speaking of which…" Janeway half-squatted on one knee to gaze across the huge paved tiled of the courtyard. "This does remind me a little of a holoprogram on _Voyager_. It's an action-adventure genre, based on a twentieth century movie series. It involves walking over a sequence of paved square tiles like this. Only some of the tiles are supported: step on the others and fall to a certain death."

"So you think there is a similar objective here?" Kira asked. "Well, only one way to find out…" And before Janeway could stop her she jumped onto a neighboring tile, eyes closed. When a moment passed and she realized she was still stanidng, she shrugged. "I'm still alive."

"You were lucky," Janeway told her, rapping on the tiles around her. "According to the echoes I'm getting, that was the only other solid tile surrounding the one you were standing on."

Kira blew air between her lips. "Well. Lucky for me."

Janeway gestured. "Lead on, McDuff."

Kira glanced at her with narrowed eyes. "McDuff had better not be some twisted human insult, or I'm going to consign you to living in a pit for the rest of your life." She gestured to the tiles around her.

Janeway laughed as Kira began rapping on the tiles around her. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"This one seems solid. Come on." Kira moved onto the tiles.

"One down, five hundred and sixty-eight to go." Janeway smiled wryly. "We're making good progress: two tiles every ten minutes. At the rate we're going, we'll might actually be finished before dinner the day after tomorrow!"

"Alright, alright, I'll move faster," said Kira, shaking her head with a smile. "Here-"

And suddenly a huge wall of flame roared up behind them. And then started to move towards them.

Janeway's eyes widened. "Much, much faster," she said. "Major, I think we've just been given a time limit."

Kira needed no further bidding. Wasting no time, she tested out the surrounding tiles by stomping on them with her foot and jumping onto those which didn't crumble under her. In that fashion they managed to move across the tiles at a fairly speedy rate.

But the wall of fire was speedier still, and played catch-up.

In desperation Kira turned to Janeway. "Captain, how fast can you jump?"

"I beg your pardon?" asked Janeway. "If you're thinking what I'm thinking…"

"I think I am."

"… you're completely insane."

"No, just desperate." She cocked her head to one side. "You coming, or not?"

Janeway glanced over her shoulder at the inferno closing on her. "I don't have very much choice, do I?" Then she grabbed Kira's hand. "Come on, let's make it fast!"

Hand in hand, the two women jumped across the tiles with wild abandon, screaming like a pair of women trying not to fall into a bunch of pits. Some of the tiles they jumped on crumbled beneath them as they landed on it, but they kept jumping and were on the next tile by then. Kira tripped and yelped as she fell into one of those pits, but she managed to stop herself by grabbing on to the neighboring solid tile. Janeway stopped and turned back to haul her to her feet, and then they were on that wild jaunt again, the wall of fire closing on their backs.

And then they were through. Before them was a mud brick wall with a small bronze door set into it. Laughing at their sheer audacity and luck, the two women went through it just as the firewall reached the mudwall.


	11. 

valkryies11 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Eleven)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

They had stepped into a narrow mud corridor connecting to the next stage of the course. Leading the way, Kira opened the door at the other end of the mud corridor-

-to reveal the inky black waters of a lake surrounding them. On the far side was a strip of land, which ended in a rugged vertical cliff.

Kira and Janeway stared.

"Now what. Don't tell me they expect us to pull a miracle out of our hats and walk across water," said Janeway.

Kira poked her boot toe into the darkling water. Suddenly without warning a pair of giant reptilian jaws rose from the depths, lined with sharp serrated teeth. It aimed a snap at Kira's foot, and she barely withdrew it from the water in time. She yelped out loud.

"I guess that effectively rules out swimming across," said Janeway. 

Then a set of toadstool-like stepping stones rose from the water. They hovered over the surface for a moment, then they began rising in and out of the water at different speeds and time, like some ballet of bowing dancers. 

"Oh no!" Kira exclaimed, trying to watch for a pattern in the rising and falling mushrooms. "How am I supposed to know when to get across!"

"Wait… wait. On my mark…" Janeway watched the mushrooms carefully, counting phase differences in her head. "Wait some more…"

"They're oscillating faster!" wailed Kira in despair.

"Patience! A bit more…. MARK!" She gave Kira a little push onto the first mushroom as they all moved into phase and began oscillating together. Kira jumped from one toadstool stepping-stone to the next with almost impeccable timing: the toadstool she jumped off began going out of phase with the one in front of it just as she jumped off it.

But by the time she reached the last mushroom, it was too late. It had already sunk.

Frantic, Kira clapped her hands to her forehead as the mushroom she was standing on began sinking downwards. The moat monsters swam hungrily around her, jaws snapping. Yet the next mushroom did not rise.

In desperation at the last minute, Kira made a huge lunge for the shore. She barely made it, the toe of her left foot grazing the water's surface as she rolled away. She got up on somewhat shaky legs and dusted herself of the reddish clingy powder. Hands on her hips, she cast a baleful glance at Janeway.

Janeway shrugged apologetically. "I must have miscalculated." Observing the mushrooms closely again, she waited for that moment when they all started to rise in phase. Then she jumped onto the first one, and hopped from one mushroom to another, all the way across, without any incident.

Kira glared playfully at her. "Sure, make it look so easy…"

Janeway smirked at her. "Timing and skill is everything, my dear." 

"Showoff." Kira punched Janeway in the arm teasingly.

Janeway gestured to the sheer cliff. "Looks like a simple spot of climbing coming up…" She shrugged. "Should be easy." She drew two spools of nylon fibres from her belt, one thick and one thin. "We'll use this."

Kira eyed the thin rope uneasily. "It won't support both our weights."

"It will," Janeway assured her. "You can use the thick rope to help you climb up, and the thin one will connect the two of us. It's safer that way. Look, they've even provided pitons for us." She gestured to the pile of slender metal rods with sharp ends stacked at the bottom of the cliff. "Do we have any karabiners?"

"I do," said Kira, exploring the pouch attached to her belt. "We can share."

"Then we're all set. You want to lead?"

"Why am I always first?"

"So that if there's something hungry on the other side, you can be the first one to get eaten."

"_Thanks_ a lot." Kira finished fixing up the karabiners and fastened one end of the nylon string to the first loop on the rock wall. "I'm still not sure about the tensile strength of this rope…"

"Don't worry so much, Major. It'll hold. Now go on…"

Sighimg, Kira began ascending the rock wall, searching for arm and leg holds. The wall was perfectly straight, something to be thankful for. She hated climbing walls that inclined at an angle. She went twenty meters up to the next loop to attach the nylon rope to, then gestured to Janeway, tethered to her by another rope, to start climbing up after her.

Halfway through the climb Kira looked down to see how Janeway was progressing, and realized it was probably the biggest mistake she'd ever made. For she was perched at least a hundred and fifty meters up in the air, and the ground looked perilously far, far away. Janeway noticed her discomfort and laughed. "Just hold on tight to the wall and you won't fall off."

Kira, plastering herself to the wall and clutching the thick nylon rope with one hand like a lifeline, was inclined to agree.

Janeway released her hold on the thick rope and transferred all her weight to one hand and one leg. She was trying to scale up a particularly tricky section by lunging nearly five meters upwards using only her left arm, which had a much more decent grip than her right foot crammed into a small toehold, to propel her upwards. Kira felt the thin rope tremble with the increased tension.

"I wouldn't advise you to do that, captain," Kira warned. "This blasted thin rope feels like it's going to break any time. There's another small grip for your hand slightly to the right to bridge the gap between that five meters. It's a more tiring path, but at least the rope won't break."

"The rope's not going to break," Janeway assured her, and lunged upwards.

The rope broke.

The sudden deficit in rope tension totally threw Janeway off balance, and she fell backwards with a shriek. "Captain!" yelled Kira as she lost her grip on the wall and fell ten meters to the last hooked position of the not-so-blasted thick rope. She banged against the rough rock wall hard, and yelped.

She gazed down at the foot of the wall, trying to see if Janeway was alright, but the dust cloud raised by their violent falls obscured most of the ground from her vision.

Then she heard a cracking sound.

With a sinking heart, she realized that the force of her fall had weakened the rock holding the loop supporting her. With a final crack, the rock splintered, and down came Kira, nylon rope and all. She fell twenty meters to the next loop supporting her.

Which also gave way as well, causing her to fall another twenty meters.

And so on, and so forth.

Kira let out a yell of indignation as she crashed rather painfully into the ground. "Yeah, great," she raved. "The rope won't break… the rope won't break... sure, _sure_! I _told_ her, but did she listen? Nooooo…. And look where we are now." She stood up and winced as every bone in her body protested. "Captain?"

Then she realized Janeway was lying unconscious on the floor, a few feet away from her.

Kira slapped a hand to her forehead and muttered a Bajoran expletive as she remembered Janeway had fallen the full hundred and fifty meters in one go. "Captain!" she yelled, heading over.

There was no response from Janeway. "Don't you dare get a concussion on me," she said sternly, bending over her comatose figure and giving her a good shake. "I'll kill you!"

Then with another sinking feeling, she realized that the fall had already done the job for her.

"Oh, _no_!" she exclaimed in horror. "You're _not_ dying on me!" She clapped her hands to her head. "Your crew is going to kill _me_!" She grabbed Janeway's hand. "_Please_… Kathryn… wake up."

Nothing happened. No pulse in the lifeless wrist.

"Damn!" Kira sank to the dusty floor and smacked her fist on it, at a loss for what to do. She couldn't really believe it nor comprehend it. Janeway couldn't really be dead, could she?

She glanced at the unmoving form beside her. Yes, she could.

Kira groaned and buried her face in her hands. She didn't know if she should laugh or cry. _This has got to be some prank the universe is playing on me,_ she thought. _A person as tough and wonderful as Janeway wouldn't be killed by a simple hundred and fifty meter fall, would she, right? Right?_

Wrong.

What was she going to do?

Feeling helpless, Kira clasped her hands together and began praying as hard as possible for some form of divine intervention to either bring Janeway back to life, or else get her as far away from the scene of the crime as possible. Preferably to a certain other quadrant forty thousand light years away.

Then there was a flash of light, and Kira realized that her prayers might have been answered after all. She glanced up, and true enough, Q was standing there. A relieved smile spread across her face in what had to be the only time in her life she was glad to see the omnipotent being. "Q!"

Q glanced down at Kira and shook his head, making dramatic 'tsk tsk' sounds. "Such cheerfulness. Really, Major, how unseemly of you. She's barely dead five minutes, and you're already celebrating her absence?"

Kira gritted her teeth and reminded herself to play nice with Q, an amazing feat in itself. She got up and dusted herself off. "I'm glad to see you, Q," she said as pleasantly as possible, hoping none of it came out dripping with sarcasm, as she was tempted to do.

If it did, however, Q was definitely returning the favor. "Oh, how touching." He knelt down beside Janeway's still form. "What a pity."

Kira entwined her fingers across her stomach and smiled hopefully, saccharine sweet. "Yes, it's very tragic, isn't it? But, of course, she doesn't have to die. You do have the capability to bring her back... doing that would make everyone happier, and your precious game could go on without interruption!" _Prophets! I sound like a sodding Ferengi!_

Q gave her a wide-eyed look as if shocked. "Bring her _back_? Whatever for? These human women are _nothing_ if not trouble." He put a hand out to her cold white cheek and sighed melodramatically. "Alas, Kathryn, we hardly knew you…"

Screw playing nice with Q. The asshole!

Dropping all pretense of civility, Kira stomped over to Q, fuming, and drove the heel of her boot viciously into his toes.

"Augh!" Q leapt up, clutching his injured toes and hopping around comically on one foot. "Oh, the pain, the pain!"

"Shut up!" snapped Kira, not in a mood for anymore Q histrionics. "Or I'll hit you. I swear!"

Q afforded her an offended look. "That was uncalled for!"

"_Uncalled for?_" Kira jammed her hands on her hips and glared full-throttle at Q. "Let _me_ tell you what's uncalled for. This woman"-she gestured to Janeway- "helped you end your little civil war, decided to put aside her grudges and play along with your ridiculous game, helped you find your daughter and prevented you from getting axe-murdered by your wife, and what do you do in return? You insult her, and stand around reciting poetry when she dies. Is that your idea of gratitude?"

Q rolled his eyes. "Morality lessons from a Bajoran… now that's a new one."

"Q. You said so yourself. You owe us one. The least you can do now… is to pay it back." She folded her arms and glanced at him imploringly.

Q sighed. "How you do go on…" he waved his fingers around, as if bored. "I suppose you do have a point. Very well, then…" He took Janeway's limp hand in his own and kissed it. "Awaken, my fair lady."

Fascinated, Kira crouched beside Janeway, waiting to see a miracle happen. For a moment nothing happened. Then she seemed to flutter her eyelids. _Seemed_, because although Kira thought she saw some movement, Janeway's eyes remained closed. "Kathryn?"

At the mention of her name, Janeway opened her eyes and blinked in confusion. And now Kira saw that there _was_ something wrong: it seemed as if there were _two_ Janeways, the living one superimposed over the dead one.

Janeway sat up, and Kira drew in a sharp, alarmed breath as she realized that there were, in fact, two Janeways: one alive, and one dead. Kira angled a questioning glance at Q. _What the hell have you done now?_

"Nerys?" The live Janeway was confused. "What just happened?" 

She put her right hand out on Kira's, and it went right through.

Shocked, Janeway jumped up, and staggered backwards as she realized she'd just jumped out of her own body. "What the hell's going on?"

"Q!" exclaimed Kira, horrified. "You've turned her into a… a _ghost_!"

Q shrugged. "So? She's back, isn't she? Just what you wanted."

"I can't complete this Quest with a ghost for a partner! Q! What were you thinking?" Kira started to storm upon him.

Q, sensing the safety of the situation degenerate, quickly backed up. He shrugged. "That's none of my business, is it!"

"Ghost?" Janeway gave the two an odd stare. "What do you mean? What happened here?"

"His idea of a joke. You fell off a cliff and died, I asked this _idiot_ here to bring you back, and he turns you into a _ghost_." Kira folded her arms severely and scowled at Q.

"Idiot?" Q clapped a hand to his chest and put on his best shocked manner, which did nothing to sway the two women before him. "You'll be thanking me for my genius later."

"Right," drawled Janeway dangerously. "Over my dead body."

"Speaking of which," said Q brightly, "you'd better get it back to your ship before it starts decomposing. It might come in handy later, you'd never know." He prodded it with his boot and shrugged. "Besides, it'd be such a waste to let a nice body like this rot."

Kira didn't know if she should hit Q on the head, or give him a good kick in the behind. So she elected to do both. Unfortunately Q saw it coming and wasted no time in disappearing from the scene, causing Kira to end up in a convoluted heap on the dusty floor. "Arrrgh!!!" she screamed in frustration.

The ghost of the Janeway present folded her arms. "Now what?"

Kira shook her head in frustration. "Don't ask me… I'm just as lost as you are." She muttered a curse under her breath. "I _told_ you the rope was going to break… This is all your fault, you realize?"

Janeway stared at her, speechless. Then her brow creased, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Fine, blame it on me. You're not the one who's dead, at any rate."

Kira's lips tightened, mentally cursing Q for all eternity. Janeway had a point: it wasn't all her fault, anyway. Blame Q: this was his hare-brained idea's entire fault. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. "I'm going back to the ship," she said tersely, picking Janeway's limp body up, and balancing it so that she could hit her commbadge. "Kira to _Voyager_. Standby for beamup."

Janeway's eyes widened. "Wait. What about the mission? And how am I supposed to get back to the ship?" She gestured downwards at her intangible self.

Kira, who was still in a mood for being mean to both people and ghosts alike, remarked snidely, "Try flying all the way back up. Should be easy for a _ghost_. Energize."

Janeway stared after the spot where Kira had just dematerialized, feeling pathetic. "Fly? How?"


	12. 

valkryies12 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Twelve)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

Kira materialized on the transporter platform onboard _Voyager_ and was immediately swamped by Torres, who was at the controls. "Medical-"

"That won't be necessary," said Kira tersely, cutting her off mid-sentence. "She's already dead."

Torres stared at Kira in shock, then checked Janeway's pulse in disbelief. "Oh gods." She grabbed Janeway's hand. "Captain!" There was no response, and Torres sucked in a deep, shaky breath. "What happened?"

In response, Kira merely shrugged fluidly. "It's a long story. We'd better get this into a stasis unit as fast as possible, so we can still reintegrate her later. That's going to be Dr. Crusher's problem entirely."

"Reintegrate? What are you talking about?"

"Her ghost… spirit… soul… or whatever you want to call it… is still stuck on the planet." Kira shook her head. "This game is becoming quite screwed up, isn't it?"

"Ghost?" asked Torres vacantly. "What in the world-?"

"As I said, long story. Bottom line is, Q was in a funny mood, decided that this was his idea of helping us, turned Captain Janeway into a ghost. I should have known better than to trust that… jerk." She handed Janeway's body to Torres, who held it clumsily at an arm's length as if it was a dead fish. "Take care of this- I've got to take a shuttle down to the planet. The mission still needs to be completed."

Torres glanced at her imploringly. "And the captain?"

"We'll sort that out later," said Kira over her shoulder as she strolled out of the doors of the transporter room.

*****

Less than half an hour later Kira was seated at the controls of the small wonderful ship they called the _Delta_ _Flyer_. It wasn't anywhere nearly as remarkable as the _Defiant_, of course, but the _Defiant_ was the _Defiant_, and this ship had been envisioned, designed and built by a group of less than hundred and fifty, all by themselves. Kira was suitably impressed.

She skimmed over the planet's surface, seeking their last coordinates. As her altitude dropped near the cliff where the accident happened, she thought she saw a small little figure on the ground bobbing up and down. Apparently the captain had learned how to fly.

Or not. As Kira brought the _Delta_ _Flyer_ closer she could make out that Janeway was in fact, _trying_ valiantly to fly by jumping up and down and trying to continue the propelling motion by flapping her arms up and down in a frenzy. And, truth to tell, she looked rather amusing doing that. Not to mention ridiculous. Kira stifled a small chuckle._ The things humans do when they're desperate…_

As the _Flyer_ prepared to land Janeway stopped bouncing and waved to Kira. Kira waved back, still smiling. Her fingers dexterous on the console, Kira landed the _Flyer_ on the ground, carefully avoiding Janeway. Not like it would have made much of a difference, though. Kira cycled the airlock open and stepped out. "Had fun?" she asked Janeway innocently.

Janeway was delighted to see her, judging from the wideness of her smile as she greeted Kira. In the back of her mind Kira thought, _Dammit, why does everyone smile better than I do?_

"For a moment back there I thought I was going to be trapped on this planet for the rest of my life… or afterlife." She took Kira's hand and shivered slightly as it went totally through.

Kira ignored it. "Come on. Do I look like someone who'd abandon her captain on the surface of an alien planet?" She waved Janeway towards the _Flyer_. "Let's go. We need to finish this silly mission fast, and I think we're entitled to cheat a little."

Janeway followed her inside the small shuttle docilely. "I'm not so sure if this is entirely legal in the whole scheme of things," she informed Kira. "Surely using a shuttle to complete and obstacle course is pushing the rules a little to far?"

"When you've become used to pushing the rules like I do," Kira told her, "you start to get a feel of when too much is too much. What we're doing here is perfectly fine. We have a case to fight: Delmar clearly said that we definitely have to get the two contestants to the end of the race, dead or alive, by hook or by crook. So we'll do crook. This is about the only way you can get to the other side, isn't it?"

Janeway nodded in affirmation. "I can't even leave footprints in the sand; I just rest on it, and I think that's mostly because of my illusion that I'm solid enough to stand on it without sinking through. Of course, I could easily walk through all the obstacles while you surmount them, but then I have a lazy partner."

"Fine, rub it in," said Kira dryly as she prepped the _Delta_ _Flyer_ for takeoff again from the pilot's seat. "Not like it's _my_ fault that you're in this predicament. I _did_ warn you, remember? But of course, being typical Starfleet, you chose not to listen to the protests of a cranky Bajoran major like me."

"Nerys, please…" sighed Janeway, sinking into the station at the back of the ship. "It's not that." She curled up on the seat, drawing her knees up to her chin as the _Delta_ _Flyer_ rose with a barely perceptible tremble. "I seem to have this recurring problem… never listening to my first officer."

"Too stubborn, I assume?" Kira asked as she steered the _Flyer_ above the sheer cliff.

"Most likely. Every time we run into some major problems, every time I need to make any kind of controversial decision, he always objects. And I never listen."

"And if he persistently presses with his opinions till the point where one has to take action?"

"He usually ends up in the brig. More or less."

"Ouch. Well, I can imagine," said Kira with empathy. "That always happens when two or more opinions clash. The one with the most number of pips wins out. Is it some sort of Starfleet directive which I'm not aware of?"

"Number forty-seven, clause Q," she jested in return. " 'All captains must be thick-skinned enough to assume the fourth pip adds an additional fifty points to their already impressive intelligence quotient.' "

"Must be the only part of the Prime Directive that every captain adheres to," Kira mused, chuckling.

"I wonder where Chakotay is," Janeway suddenly remarked, as the _Delta_ _Flyer_ flew over a wide, flat plateau that they were supposed to be crossing on foot.

Kira caught the wistful subtext in Janeway's voice, and turned around to address the captain, a twinkle in her eye. "Say, about what we were talking about that last dinner…"

Janeway rolled her eyes. "Please don't remind me."

Kira returned her attention to her console as the plateau ended abruptly, plunging hundred of meters down into a steep, narrow valley. The floor of the valley was made of coarse gray gravel, sharp and gritty. Along the precipitous walls of the valley ranged several hundred lean brindled animals, almost canine in appearance, and most likely predatory. The number of white bones scattered around the valley seemed to be testimony to that. Kira was fairly glad she wasn't down there, fending off coyotes with a pointed stick. "Remind you? I'd have thought you would find it unforgettable."

Janeway merely snorted.

"We're alone now, just the two of us…"

"So?"

"Which means you can tell me what you were blushing about."

"I wasn't!"

"There you go again, denying the truth. Come on, we all know. Seven even noticed the rise in temperature in your cheeks. So there is a man?"

"Not a chance in hell."

Kira shook her head as she twisted the _Flyer_ to avoid an outcropping of stone. "This Chakotay… he's your first officer, isn't he? The one you never listen to." She turned around to see Janeway looking slightly pinker than normal again. "You must really miss working with him."

"Oh, keep quiet," laughed Janeway, sticking her fingers in her ears.

"Ah, no denial this time?" teased Kira as she wove the _Delta_ _Flyer_ through the end of the valley and into the hall of flame. It was essentially a large circular patch of marble dotted with flame generators at regular intervals. The flame generators produced huge plumes of fire periodically and all out of phase of each other. Kira wove the _Delta_ _Flyer_ back and forth, avoiding the shafts of fire. They wouldn't have hurt their shields the least bit, but they might have blinded her and caused her to crash the ship, a situation she wasn't really eager to get into. "So how close are the two of you, actually?"

"Our relationship is strictly professional," insisted Janeway.

"Really. And Elvis Presley is one of the Prophets," retorted Kira.

"Believe what you want. At the end of the day it only matters that I get all my men back."

"Especially Chakotay, hmm?"

"Keep quiet and focus on piloting," said Janeway, waving her off. "Or you're going to suffer for it. I'll start singing… doing a backseat driver imitation…or doing something you're not going to like very much."

"O-kay," said Kira, grinning. "Subject change: how does it feel being a ghost?"

"Well, there's the usual frustration about being intangible," Janeway replied at last. "It takes some getting used to the fact that you can go through just about anything if you want to." She let out a small sigh, looking faintly aggrieved. "At least this time I can see and talk to the rest of my crew."

At the risk of incinerating their ship, Kira turned back to Janeway again. "At least this time? What do you mean? You sound like you have out-of-body experiences every other day."

"Hyperbole," remarked Janeway. "Only once… and it wasn't real."

"You've died before," said Kira, mildly astounded.

"I imagined that I did, several times over," Janeway affirmed. "Or at least, I hope that it was all imaginary."

"You must have more lives than a cat," said Kira. "So, what happened in the end?"

"I didn't die."

"_That_ much is obvious," said Kira dryly, clearing the last plume of fire and heading straight for the end line. "Let me guess: Chakotay rescued you from whatever predicament you were in."

"You should count yourself fortunate that I'm intangible," drawled Janeway, "else my boot would be flying at your head by now."

"Thank Q for small favors. I'm sorry for my persistence in the subject. I picked it up from Jadzia… that girl has such a one-track mind sometimes."

Janeway sighed patiently, then waved her hand in acquiescence. "Alright, alright. I'll admit it. You are… partially correct on that last point you made."

"Hah. Are you sure it's _only_ on the last point?"

"You're pushing it, Major…" 

Kira laughed and cut the engines and used the ventral thrusters to land the _Delta_ _Flyer_ on the flat circular patch of grass beside the judges' table. "Enough of small talk," said Janeway, casting her a dirty glance. "Now we have to see what the judges have to say about our use of shuttles to complete the obstacles."

******

Three hours later, Janeway and Kira were still stuck in the small circular waiting tent next to the judges' table as they quibbled outside about whether to qualify the duo or toss them out of the nearest airlock for their cheek. The tent was hot but airy, made of white canvas material. The open top still revealed the angry reddish sky to the two women- well, one woman and one ghost, at any rate. Kira was tracing patterns in the red dust floor in her boredom. Janeway, much as she wanted to do the same, was unable to. For that she was fairly annoyed.

Finally she sat beside Kira at the circumference of the tent. "What are you drawing?"

"Drawing? I'm cursing in Bajoran."

Janeway scrutinized the stylized loops in the sand for a moment, then said, "I can't read Bajoran."

"Don't bother. There's nothing worth reading there."

"Do you honestly think we'll get disqualified?"

"I hope not. We can't fail any of our stations… and I think disqualification qualifies as an all-out failure. I shudder to think what would happen if we did."

"We'd never get our lives back. Q would just leave us this way."

"I'm sure he was joking."

"He's never lied before."

"There's always a first time."

"Either way, I sincerely hope that those silly four idiots out there decide to be merciful on us." 

"We could always play on their compassion." Kira put on her best wounded puppy look and said, "But our captain died. It was so bad that we had no other choice. What is our ship going to do without a captain?"

Janeway fought the impulse to laugh. "They will never buy it."

At this point the tent opening flapped open, and one of the judge's pages stood there, a young child no more than thirteen years old. "Come," he said. "It is decided."

Kira and Janeway stood and followed the page to the judges' panel, gazing down at the two of them impassively with all the pompous air of a gathering of Grand High Admirals. "Human contestants." said the head judge as he started to address them. Kira and Janeway said nothing as he launched into a long fable of similes and imagery, extolling the virtue of fair play. It was a heavy-handed diatribe of morality witch slammed Kira and Janeway for using a shuttle to finish the game first. But finally he snapped shut his little booklet of ruled and shrugged. "But you have not broken any of the extensive rules set in here. We see no other conceivable way to bring an intangible person to the finish line. So we have decided that…you win."

Kira and Janeway glanced at each other, then back at the judge, in disbelief. "Really?"

The judge gave them a dirty look, then opened the book again. "Well, I could always change my mind if you want…"

Alarmed, Kira shook her head. "No, thank you! We'll be fine!" She reached out to grab Janeway's hand, and growled in frustration when she found herself clutching empty air. "Come on, let's go."

Janeway needed no further bidding. The duo scurried back to the _Delta_ _Flyer_ as fast as their legs would let them, thinking in disbelief, _We won? We won!_


	13. Chapter 13

Ship of The Valkyries (Part Thirteen) ****

Ship of The Valkyries (Part Thirteen)

A Star Trek crossover Fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL)

It was a bittersweet victory, at best. They had won the game, but they more or less had lost their captain. Janeway sat miserably in her seat as the senior crew assembled again to discuss ways of remedying this.

They were desperate. For one thing, the men of the _Voyager_ weren't going to be to pleased when they returned to their ship and found their captain had been turned into a mere specter of what she was before. For another thing, intangibility was beginning to get on Janeway's nerves, and an annoyed Janeway was _not_ good news. She couldn't do anything except walk, sit and talk to others. As a ghost she had no need for sleep or nutrition, meaning she couldn't take advantage of Neelix's absence to try out some good pantry-cooked food. She couldn't even drink coffee. So she just slumped in her chair, sulking, and thinking of a million and one creative ways to kill Q the next time she saw him so they could share the same predicament. 

As if.

After two days solid of suggesting ways of reintegrating Janeway with her body and trying the various methods out, they had yet to come up with a suitable means for success. Save for begging Q for help, they were fast running out of options. Desperate, they had turned given up on the metaphysical aspects and had gone back to simple medical techniques to try to revive her body. It hadn't worked, but they persisted anyway. There was even an old Chinese adage to describe the situation: _Treating a dead horse like a live one_. Except that Janeway was no horse, and she probably wouldn't appreciate being called one very much.

Troi sipped her cup of hot chocolate thoughtfully as they sat together in the briefing room. Janeway glanced enviously at her, wishing she were solid enough to pick up a cup of coffee. Sighing, she settled back in her chair as Jadzia suggested yet another means to bring her back to life.

"Perhaps the problem lies not in our techniques but in the … materials we have to work with. Maybe her body's been out of commission too long for her to be able to re-enter it," she postulated. "We might try cloning her…"

"Her body's been in stasis ever since Major Kira brought it on board," retorted Crusher. "I've even run it through a regenerative cycle to heal all the injuries she sustained in the fall. I don't think the body's the problem. Something- a single lettered omnipotent something, specifically- must be interfering with our plans."

"Q's really gone too far this time," Jadzia muttered darkly. "Games are fine as games, but they aren't fun when people start dying. Won't he ever learn?"

"Maybe he had a purpose in doing this," countered Kira. At the incredulous looks from everybody in the room, Kira hastily added, "I thought through this, and I realized her being a ghost set us up for the perfect excuse to breeze through the whole thing."

"I think I'd have preferred the fires of perdition to this," remarked Janeway dryly.

"So Q thought he was pretty smart, invented a way for us to cheat our way out of this one. This still doesn't explain why he doesn't allow us to bring her back to life," Jadzia pointed out.

"Maybe we should ask Cass for help," suggested Keiko.

"No-one knows where she is," replied Crusher. "That girl drifts in and out of the ship like a wind."

Vexed, Torres spun the small ovoid object that Cass had given them as a reward for one of their Quests. Originally Kira had thought that its Orb-like properties would aid them in bringing Janeway back, but apparently it didn't possess such usefulness. As it was, the crew found it an enigma in itself. Nobody could activate it. She gave it another quick turn as she contemplated other ways of bringing people back to life, drawing on Klingon mythology to inspire herself. Yet she came up with nothing.

Irritated, she gave the ovoid a hard turn. It skittered out of control and went spinning across the table, sliding to a stop before Janeway's seat. Torres rolled her eyes in exasperation, but otherwise made no move to retrieve it. Bored, Janeway began fiddling with the yellow object in front of her.

"Maybe if we tried storing her… spirit in energy form," mused Keiko thoughfully.

Seven looked up, then stopped and stared in alarm. "Captain."

Janeway stopped tossing the ovoid from hand to hand and gave Seven an intense blue glance. "Is there something wrong, Seven?"

"You are able to interact with the object."

Staring at the ovoid object in her palm, Janeway suddenly realized that it was true. She couldn't pick anything up, hold anything or even rest her elbows on anything without sinking through, yet this mysterious object responded to her touch. She turned it over to look at its underside, and noticed again the circle of pale yellow on the side which resembled a power button. None of the crew had succeeded in activating it. Wondering what would happen, Janeway curiously pressed the button.

Immediately the whole briefing room was filled with an ambient yellow glow as the ovoid opened up like a clamshell. Alarmed by the sudden influx of light energy, Janeway snapped the two halves shut before anything undue could happen.

Jadzia was staring at the small ovoid in awe. "Well, at least we're making some progress in one aspect…"

"We should try this under more controlled conditions," said Janeway. "I want to find out more about what this radiation is, and what properties it possesses. It should turn something up."

"Did you notice a pattern?" said Guinan suddenly. "All our rewards are being used to aid us in subsequent Quests. On the first one we got Ro, who later went on to complete another mission on her own, then we have this ovoid object, which might help us now, and the child's toy which helped us locate Quinlan, and then Q's so-called undying gratitude which more or less helped us with the last Quest."

"I'm a reward? Thanks so much. How flattering," muttered Ro, shaking her head.

"Well, that can only tide good news for us," said Janeway optimistically. She held up her hand with the ovoid object. "We'll conduct more experiments on this in Astrometrics, where we can get detailed scans on what happens when the artifact is opened." As an afterthought she added, "Bring my body along. I might need it."

******

The whole meeting's venue had been shifted from the briefing room to the imposing room of Astrometrics. Janeway sat perched on the tier before the viewscreen, cradling the ovoid enigma like a lost treasure, which it most likely was. The rest of the crew quickly assisted Seven in setting up the scanning equipment, while Crusher brought her body out of status and prepped it for possible reanimation.

Finally, they were ready. With bated breath, they watched as Janeway opened the clamshell. The warm yellow ambient light filled the room again. Reading off her charts like a computer, Seven reported high intensities of neutrino flux and EM radiation, which spiked as the glow from the sphere grew brighter. Janeway just stared at the apex of the object, eyes wide open as if mesmerized, the yellow light throwing her oddly angular face into sharp relief.

The yellow brightened to a point where it was more a painful actinic white, and most of the women squeezed their eyes shut to avoid being blinded. Still Janeway stared into its depths with a beatific expression on her face. "I can see beyond…."

With a soundless explosion, a wave of blue energy swept outwards from the clamshell and spread through Astrometrics.

Jadzia cautiously opened one eye. The clamshell object had clattered to the floor, and Janeway's ghost was nowhere to be seen. She picked up the object and scanned it, but it seemed to have returned to its normal inert state. She still couldn't open it. She looked around the room. "Captain?"

There was no response. Slowly the rest of the women began opening their eyes. "Where is she?" Torres asked, glancing around the room in alarm. Had they inadvertently transported her into some inaccessible higher dimension?

Then Crusher let out an astonished gasp. "She's alive!" Instantly everyone turned. Crusher was grasping Janeway's hand in excitement. "There's a pulse….captain, can you hear me?"

Janeway's eyes fluttered open languidly, as if she was waking from some long, dark slumber. Then something in the back of her mind clicked, and she snapped upright, saying, "I'm back-" That was as far as she got before she got smothered in Torres' exuberant embrace.

There were whoops and cheers in Astrometrics as Crusher scanned Janeway and pronounced her one hundred percent alive. Guinan even went as far as to do a little victory dance with Jadzia around the perimeter of Astrometrics.

After a short while everything more or less settled down. Janeway still sat perched on the corner of the stasis unit, her legs swinging in the air like a little girl's. Seven disappeared for the nearest replicator and came back bearing a tray of cups of coffee. 

"You know," mused Keiko quietly, "you mentioned that we've used all our rewards to help us with one Quest or the other. But there is one we haven't made use of yet. The scepter."

"Mmm." Janeway smiled as Seven approached her with a cup of coffee. "Is that for me? Thank you." She held out her hand to accept the cup of coffee.

It shot out of Seven's hand and flew directly into hers. 

Janeway stared at the cup of coffee in absolute surprise.

******

Three hours and many grueling tests later, it was confirmed: the reanimation of Janeway had somehow endowed her with Q powers. Nobody knew how, or why this had happened, although Jadzia had a few theories in mind, all of which began with the capital letter 'Q'.

They were seated around the long table in the Mess Hall when Cass reappeared. The Diocese was dressed in a simple figure-hugging nylon suit with pastel pink leggings She just popped up in the usual Q style of a flash of light between Kira and Ro, causing the latter to drop her cup of coffee onto the table. The cup shattered.

With a snap of her fingers, Janeway flashed the mess out of existence.

Cass smiled. "So it worked."

The women glanced at her in interest. "So this was all planned?" Janeway asked. "Turning me into a ghost, then bringing me back as a Q? What's the point?"

"It was planned," Cass admitted, "but not by Q." She smiled conspiratorially. 

"You did all this!" Kira exclaimed. "How? And more importantly, why?"

"Let's just say I'm a good predictor of Q's temperament and character," said Cass silkily. "And I enlisted the help of a few friends to provide all the necessary equipment. And of course, all of you followed the script to the letter."

"That's nice," said Torres mildly, "but how in the world is that pertinent to us? Can we just finish our last Quest now and have everything returned to normal?"

"Forget the last Quest." Cass held out her hand, and the scepter of rubies appeared in her hand. She slid it over to Janeway, who picked it up, studying the huge red ruby in its center with interest. "I have… something else in mind."

Janeway smiled in a feral manner as she realized what it was that Cass wanted her to do.


	14. Chapter 14

valkryies14 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Fourteen)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

They were all seated in the Mess Hall and relaxing when Q arrived. He scowled at them. "Where's Cass? Shouldn't you be on your next Quest by now? Unless, of course, you girls have decided that life without men is better…" He glanced over at Janeway and grinned. "Well, Madame Captain, it seems like you've found a way back to your body. Aren't you just positively thankful for my insightful genius?"

Janeway was clearly not amused. "Yes," she drawled, "I'm positively thankful for all the grief you've caused me. As a matter of fact, I want to show you some of my gratitude." Rising from her seat, she sauntered slowly over to Q, who was eyeing every inch of her hungrily. She circled him slowly, scepter in one hand, tracing a line along the base of her neck with the other. She stopped in front of him, then tapped his shoulder with the scepter while whispering into his ear. "Congratulations. You're not It anymore."

While Jadzia groaned inwardly at Janeway's dumb physics pun, Q's eyes widened as the large central ruby glowed red, then yellow as it shone with an odd internal light. "What have you done now?"

Janeway's entire demeanor changed as she quickly stepped out of reach, clutching the scepter tightly, smirking. "Just a few minor adjustments, that's all."

"You've taken away my powers!"

"I think it's an improvement," said Guinan, lounging on the gray couch in the corner.

The women in the hall laughed. Ro flashed Kira a gallingly perfect smile as the two sat together beside Jadzia and Crusher.

"Very funny. Now, Madame Captain, be a good girl and hand them back to me." He tried to make a grab for the scepter.

"Ah-ah. Not so fast." Janeway held the scepter out of Q's reach. "First there are some things you must do." She nearly laughed at the exasperated expression on Q's face. "Other than just restoring us back to our usual lives, I want you to apologize to us- all of us- for all the inconveniences you've caused."

Q stared at her. "Apologize to these… mortals? Woman, are you brain-dead?" 

"No, just holding on to your Q powers." Janeway smiled fiercely at Q as she said it, twirling her scepter in her hand and infuriatingly holding it just out of Q's reach. She clutched the scepter close to herself, smirking.

Q refused to yield. "I will not be cozened into this!" he exclaimed. "I'm Q! It's beneath my dignity!"

Janeway's temper flared slightly at that. "So it's alright for you to force us into doing all sorts of silly whims as how you like it, but not alright for us to ask for even an apology?" She emphasized her words with violent gestures of her scepter, pressing forward onto Q and causing him to retreat step by step until she had him fetched up against a wall. She dropped her voice to a dangerous whisper. "And I think you owe me and my crew a big one."

Q realized he was trapped. With a barely made gesture of his hand, he called out for reinforcements. 

With a flash of light Q's wife appeared, looking irate. "What now? First you go gallivanting all over the galaxy without telling me where you're going, then you never turn up for dinner, and there-" She stopped and stared at Janeway. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. 

"Taking unfair advantage of me, that's what!" spluttered Q indignantly as he tried to straighten up.

"Unfair advantage!" Janeway whirled back to face Q, pointed her scepter at him and zapped his derriere with an unforgiving blast of energy. "You still have the cheek to say that after all you've done to us!"

Q yelped and rubbed his behind. Q glowered at Janeway for gratuitous abuse of her husband. Kira clapped her hands and gave Janeway a thumbs-up sign in the time-honored tradition of saying, "You go, girl!"

Q folded her arms across her chest. "Looks like somebody's experiments have gotten out of hand… _again_." She turned her glare to focus on her husband. "And of course, it falls to the dutiful wife to get you out of your self-inflicted rut."

The piteous look on Q's face at that moment alone made slogging through six Quests seem almost worthwhile. Jadzia and Keiko exchanged a knowing grin, being the only two currently married crewmembers on board the ship. "But it wasn't _my_ idea to give her powers!"

"_Right_. Just the mere idea of giving them to that atavism Riker was bad enough… and now you have to bestow them on this scrawny specimen?" She circled Janeway, looking down disdainfully at her.

Torres bristled at the insult to her captain. "Who, as you recall, helped you end your civil war, is your son's appointed godmother, and not to mention is holding on to your husband's powers," she said acidly.

Q scowled at the half-Klingon engineer's impertinence. "See, dear," said Q in placating tone, "if we don't do something about it now, they will never learn their rightful place!"

Q nodded in agreement, casting the motley assortment of women gathered around her a haughty glance. "Relent," she told Janeway.

"Not until he apologizes," insisted Janeway staunchly.

"Stubborn, aren't you? All right then. Which one first? The mates of this scrawny specimen, or the primitive half-breed?" Q's expression took on a crafty smile as she considered her husband. "Or both?"

"Well…" Q scratched his chin. "Technically neither of them are considered mates yet… but we all know the truth, don't we?"

The smoldering look Janeway cast the two Q at that moment would have melted braver people where they stood.

Q snapped her fingers. Paris and Chakotay appeared in the middle of the Mess Hall. With an outcry of surprise at being returned to the presence of all they knew and loved, the two men started forward-

-and ran hard into a blue forcefield in front of them, rebounded and landed on their rear ends simultaneously with similar yelps of mortification.

It was so comical the girls would have laughed had the situation not been so dire.

Q pointed her finger at them. "Since you refuse to cooperate, you can choose which one you want to die first. Helm Boy or Chuckles?"

The two men cast an anxious glance at each other, not knowing what to make of this situation.

Janeway's lips tightened, but she remained steadfast.

The atmosphere in the room tensed. Seated on the other end of the couch from Guinan, Torres gripped the armrest, hard, and Troi winced at the overwhelming bombardment of concern from her.

Q arched one eyebrow, simultaneously impressed and galled by the woman's audacity. "No?" She singled Chakotay out with a blue beam of energy. "Last chance…. Ten… nine… eight…"

"Captain…. whatever they want you to do, don't do it," said Chakotay bravely, trying to ignore the fact that he was seven seconds away from guaranteed oblivion.

Torres had a different suggestion. "Captain, Q isn't worth risking both their lives over. Let's just play along with them, return his powers and be done with it." She glanced over at Paris, then looked back at Janeway. "_Please_."

"Five… four…"

"I've had enough of playing along with Q," said Janeway in a low, angry voice, but it seemed to be trembling on the edge of breaking. She gazed at Chakotay as Q continued her inexorable countdown. His eyes locked with hers._ I'm sorry._

"Two… one… zero."

Chakotay -and Paris- involuntarily shut their eyes.

Nothing happened.

Paris opened one eye to assess the situation, decided it was safe, and opened the other.

"Hey," Q protested to his wife, "why haven't you done anything?"

"Because I stopped her," said a voice from behind him, soft and mellifluous, but yet carrying an undercurrent of steel. Everyone whirled to see Cass standing in the doorway of the Mess Hall, her wavy golden hair cascading over her shoulders. "You promised _someone_ that nobody would get hurt in this game." And behind her, Quinlan and another boy, a sandy-haired child with a bright expression, presumably q, stood.

Much of the tension in the room dispersed; Ro actually laughed out loud, while Jadzia and Crusher smiled at each other, all teeth and radiance, much to the growing annoyance of Kira. Torres unclenched her fingers from where they'd torn into the upholstery of the couch. Janeway let out the breath she'd been holding, visibly sagging in relief.

Q scowled at his handpicked Diocese. "So you're the one who's been planning all this! Cass! I'm disappointed! And to think I put so much faith in you…"

Paris noticed that Chakotay's eyes were still squeezed shut, and he poked him cautiously. "You're alive." 

"Shut up. You're not entitled to speak," snapped Q as she pointed to the two imprisoned males. "Back to where you came from." With another snap of her fingers the two men disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. 

Q folded his arms and glared at Cass. "Why are you helping them? Aren't you supposed to be on our side?"

Cass tapped her foot patiently on the floor. "You're forgetting, Q. There is no _our side_ or _their side_ in this game. I helped you petition to bring this event through with the Q council, remember? And do you remember the objectives we set for this game?"

" 'To teach the next generation of Q the value of teamwork in surmounting seemingly impassable odds,'" recited Q, waving a hand as if bored.

"Which is precisely what we have done. Despite differences in ideologies, backgrounds and even alliances, we all worked together to achieve a common goal, no?"

"What do you mean, _we_? So you consider yourself one of them now?" Q gestured, exasperated. "I thought we were long past that!"

"Once a mortal, always a mortal at heart," Cass replied. "You learn to care for the welfare of others, full well knowing how fragile and precious life is." She smiled back at the assembled women. "Isn't that right?"

Nods and murmurs of agreement. The women obviously enjoyed seeing Q being dressed down in front of his wife. Q, to her credit, made no angry outbursts or protests, merely folding her arms across her chest and watching the show with carefully-guarded interest.

"And I'm sure one of the objectives we included in our project proposal included emphasis on _playing fair_. Well, all your cheats- unapproved by me, of course, and this little _interesting_ twist of plot don't fit in the picture then." Q rebutted.

Cass snapped her fingers and a slim paper file appeared in her hand. She flipped through it with clinical accuracy. "As a matter of fact, that objective was not mentioned in our approved proposal." _Flip flip flip. _"Although it did mention the teaching of creativity and flexible thinking in times of adversity." She snapped the file shut and smiled sweetly to the children, inciting another round of smile envy from Kira. "Did you learn all that?"

The two children nodded. 

"And what is the point of _this_ exercise, then?"

"A lesson in humility. You needed one."

Janeway hid a smile. She couldn't have agreed more with this young woman.

Then Quinlan said, "You always tell me to say sorry to q every time we fight." She pointed to Janeway. "So how come you can't say sorry to Kathy?"

Q was silent. Then he scowled. "I hate it when you women gang up on me… it's annoying."

"You deserve it, I'd say," rebutted Kira, "and I don't hear an apology coming."

"Alright, alright! I give in!_ I'm sorry!_ There, happy now?" exploded Q in annoyance. "Or won't you be satisfied until I'm _crawling_ in front of you?" He folded his arms across his chest. Q rolled her eyes and shook her head, more or less fairly amused by the husband's being cornered by a group of lesser beings.

"Happy and satisfied? Not until we get our men back," said Jadzia with sweet venom.

Q groaned.


	15. chapter 15

valkryies15 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Fifteen)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

The men were boldly being kept in a disused shed in the back of the Q Continuum where no one had gone before in the last fifty thousand cycles. Amongst abandoned solar systems, discarded protostars and plans for black hole expansion, the motley group of males had bonded, more or less.

When the women arrived, the men were engaged in their own form of entertainment. Sisko, Worf and Tuvok had formed their own silent niche in a corner, and were bouncing Sisko's baseball to each other in boredom. Picard and Chakotay were in another, exchanging archaeological and anthropological anecdotes to each other and boring the heck out of everyone within earshot (which might have explained the sudden dearth of people around them). Riker, LaForge, Paris and Kim were playing a game of poker with cut-out plans of the Alpha Quadrant. Bashir and O'Brien were playing darts with sharp pointy objects which the Q used to poke wormholes into subspace, placing the target strategically so that any stray shots would drive into Quark's sniveling Ferengi butt. Perhaps as a result of this (or not) the only person who'd had enough guts to approach Quark so far was Neelix, and Odo was keeping one wary eye on them. The Doctor and Data had elected to form a duet, much to the annoyance of all present. Well, they _could_ sing, but it had gotten more than slightly irritating when they'd begun on the four hundred and forty seventh variation to "Ten Green Bottles". The rest of the several hundred ensigns, noncoms and other insignificant personnel were fearfully crammed into the back of the shed, hoping they'd get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of Q civilization and that nobody would recognize them. 

Everyone looked up when the women arrived, and delighted smiles spread out throughout the room. With a barely stifled cry, Torres darted across the room and flung her arms around Paris' neck before turning to toss Q a dirty look, as if to say, _And don't you dare ever touch my man again…_

Janeway gestured to the men assembled before them. "Well, Q, I think you owe them an apology too."

Q's eyes widened. "Them? What have I done to _them_ which merits them the honor of my apologies? All they've done is slack here doing nothing in the relative comfort of the Continuum, while I've been out there slogging to get you hardheaded women to cooperate!"

"They slack and do nothing all the time on our ships anyway, and compared to where we come from, I must say the Continuum is an absolute mess," rebutted Jadzia, eliciting a loud protest of "Hey!" from Bashir, speaking for mankind in general. 

Q folded his arms and made a huffing noise. "I won't apologize to these uncivilized, worthless and pathetic excuses for manhood," he said superciliously. "It's demeaning."

The women formed an indignant, intimidating circle around him, and Q began seriously rethinking his actions. Janeway was terrifying enough as a mortal, and now that she was endowed with powers equal to his… he shuddered. Even the weight of the entire Continuum behind him wouldn't be enough to save him should she get really, really incensed. Better to play safe and survive.

"All right! All right! You win again. Alright guys, listen up, this is the one and only time you're going to hear these words from my mouth! I'm sorry you're such uncivilized, worthless and pathetic excuses for manhood!"

Janeway's eyes narrowed.

Q gulped at the intensity of her glare, and quickly added, "And for all the inconveniences I've caused you of course… but that doesn't change the fact that you all are uncivilized, worthless, pathetic excuses for manhood."

"And you're an uncivilized, worthless, pathetic excuse for a Q," sneered Paris in return, drawing shouts of laughter from the rest of the men. 

"Laugh some more, and I'll turn you all into primordial protoplasmic slime," Q threatened.

Ro rolled her eyes. "_Men_."

******

__

Voyager was one crowded ship. With a snap of Q's fingers, the whole crew of _Deep Space Nine_, the _Enterprise_ and _Voyager_ had all been transported back. All the senior crew were crammed into the mess hall, giving some appropriateness to its moniker. All around were bubbly spirits, celebrations, and smiles that were making a certain Bajoran major very envious.

The moment they'd been returned to their places the crew had all gathered around their crewmates in delight. Jadzia sought out Worf, her husband, while Torres refused to leave Paris' side. O'Brien enveloped his wife and his daughter in a bear-crushing hug, and Picard seemed more than overjoyed to see his counselor and doctor again. Especially his doctor. Janeway approached Chakotay, smiling. She stood hesitantly before him for a moment, then gave in to her feelings and threw her arms around him in a relieved hug. "Welcome back. I missed you."

Watching from beside Worf, Jadzia turned and gave Ro, who was talking to Riker and Troi, a nudge. The three women exchanged a glance, and giggled.

"Well, I think this warrants a celebration," announced Guinan with her usual wide smile. "Refreshments on Q, of course."

Q rolled his eyes and folded his arms tightly as the room erupted in wild cheers. "I'm going to have a _little_ chat with Cass when I get back to the Continuum," he growled. With a snap of his fingers a banquet table appeared in the middle of the Mess Hall, filled with plates of live _gagh_, a large platter full of dark blue berries and a huge pitcher of Romulan Ale. "Enjoy."

Cautiously, Seven picked up one of the juicy looking berries and ate it.

An instant later she scrunched her face up in agony and let out a resounding yell of disgust.

"What's wrong with it?" asked Torres, obviously amused by Seven's wild reaction to the fruit. She picked one up and handed it to Paris. "I bet even Tom could stomach this."

Paris, having had the gauntlet thrown down for him, accepted the berry reluctantly and took a tiny nibble from it.

__

"Aaaaaaaaaaargh! It's **SOUR**!!" Paris doubled over in agony and spat out the remains of the berry, howling. 

Q could hardly keep a straight face as he told them, "Oh dear. I must have forgotten to tell you that they were called sourberries… my, how absent-minded of me."

Seven, on the other hand, was not so amused. In an unusual display of passionate indignance, the ruffled ex-Borg marched over to the table, seized a handful of _gagh_, and shoved it down the back of Q's psuedo Starfleet uniform.

With a giggled, Ro applauded Seven's move, and the women all converged on Q, armed with fistfuls of the live wriggling worms. When they were done with him he was barely recognizable, covered head to toe in live Klingon food. Well, Guinan _had_ said that refreshments were on Q…

Q scowled deeply, then flashed the mess out of existence. "Very funny. I suppose that getting a person all covered in disgusting material is your concept of _high humor_. Well, I could hardly blame you. After all, your brains haven't substantially evolved beyond the age of sticks and bones. I'd hardly expect your idea of entertainment to have changed much."

"And of course, feeding others sour fruits to watch them howl is the epitome of civilized Q behavior," noted Crusher dryly. 

The rest of the crew burst into laughter, flashing sets of orthodontic perfection as Q realized he'd been caught in his own trap. Annoyed, Kira made her way across the room, searching for Sisko. Much as she liked these people, Kira was ready to get back to _Deep Space Nine_ and away from all these infuriatingly flawless smiles. It was an appalling sentiment, but somehow she thought she might prefer that fringe of Federation space, perched on the brink of an explosive war, because people smiled less. Not that smiling was a bad thing, mind you, just that it made her feel insecure.

Sisko was in the other corner of the room, watching the proceedings with an amused smirk on his face. "Commander," said Kira, "we should return to _Deep Space Nine_ soon."

Sisko turned, saw her, and did the damnedest thing.

He gave her a perfect, brilliant smile.

It was time to go. After spending all those days together and bonding as one, the women were all being split up again, light years apart, serving on their different ships. It was a bittersweet moment. On one hand, they were all happy to get their lives back without any permanent damage. Yet on another they were unwilling to part with their new friends. For all they knew, it would be a long time until they could all meet up again. Everyone gathered in one of the shuttle bays, the only place large enough to hold all of them at the same time.

"Hey," said Kira lightly to Janeway, patting her arm, "keep us posted when _Voyager_ returns to the Alpha Quadrant, alright? Then we could have a reunion." She winked at Torres. "We could reminisce about our dragon-herding session."

"I'll never forget that," said Torres. "You don't get to interact with those critters everyday." 

Janeway smiled at her temporary Bajoran first officer. "It was an … experience serving with you. Benjamin Sisko is lucky to have you as a first officer."

"Thanks," mumbled Kira, ducking her head to hide her smile.

"And keep smiling," Janeway advised her.

Kira looked up at her in surprise. "Me? I look awful when I smile."

Janeway raised an eyebrow. "On the contrary. I think you look perfectly wonderful when you do."

"Really." Kira shrugged with a brilliant smile of her own. "I never knew that… wonders never cease, do they?"

"When this war is over, I'll come visiting to the _Enterprise_," Ro promised the crew. "If you don't throw me into the brig at first sight, of course."

"Why would we do that, I wonder, Maquis Girl?" asked Riker in a mock-innocent voice.

Keiko bid Seven and Samantha Wildman her own goodbye. "Take good care of Naomi," she advised. "She's such a sweet kid."

Jadzia addressed the other two women from _Voyager_ as they made the final preparations to leave. "You two take good care of your men, y'hear?" At Janeway's look, she added, "Don't tell me you don't have one, Kathy, we all know the truth." She winked at Janeway's reddening expression. "I hope I'll get to see you guys soon."

Q, standing in a corner, rolled his eyes. "Yadda yadda yadda… are you done now, or shall I take a nice leisurely walk around the quadrant and come back for you one or two cosmic cycles later?"

"We're ready," said Troi.

The _Enterprise_ and _Deep Space Nine_ crew stood together with the rest of their crews in the shuttle bay, facing the _Voyager_ crew. Janeway swallowed a lump in her throat as in a flash of light, they all disappeared back to where they had come from, fifty thousand light years away. Suddenly the shuttle bay looked forlorn and empty.

Torres blinked. "Well, that's that, I suppose," she said as she scrutinized the mostly empty shuttle bay. "We all had a nice time, learnt to hate Q's guts, and picked up a plethora of other motley talents." She put an arm around Tom. "And now life is back to normal." She sighed. "I guess I'd better get down to Engineering and check that everything's alright and hope that Q didn't put any monkey wrenches in our warp core for making a big fool out of him."

Janeway gave her a tight smile of reassurance. "He wouldn't have dared."

"Well, actually, I'm hungry," said Kim. "Is anyone else in the mood for dinner?"

"A celebratory dinner," insisted Neelix. "For getting out of this ordeal alive."

"Sounds good," said Paris, nodding.

"Then let's go down to the Mess Hall. I heard that Guinan left a few things in the pantry for us," said Neelix, nearly bubbling over in excitement. "Including-" he leaned over to whisper conspiratorially to Janeway, "- a genuine twenty-first percolator, so I heard."

Janeway waved towards the entrance of the shuttle bay, as if to usher the rest of them out first. Chakotay slipped one hand around her waist to escort her out of the bay. Suddenly Janeway remembered a small detail about the past few days, and she stiffened. Chakotay sensed it, and asked, "Is something wrong?"

Over the years of serving under their temperamental (or some would say just plain mental) captain, Kim and especially Paris had developed an uncanny sense of knowing when they were in deep trouble with her, and right now red alert bells were going off in their heads. Paris slowly turned away from the door of the shuttle bay and blessed escape to look at Janeway. "Captain?" 

Janeway's piercing stare could have melted the two officers into the ground on the spot. "I was just interested in knowing something," she drawled slowly. Then she paused, and the two men flinched at her next question.

"Just what _have_ you been telling Naomi Wildman about Chakotay and myself?"


	16. chapter 16 (final chapter!)

valkryies16 ****

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Sixteen)

__

A Star Trek_ crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)_

Deep Space Nine. Such a wonderful, beautiful place, complete with Cardassians, Ferengi and all. Kira relaxed with Jadzia and Keiko in Quark's Bar, taking a breather from the last few hectic days while the men- for once- did all the dirty work there was to do.

Somehow things had changed. Somehow she missed the ambience and the camaraderie she'd felt on _Voyager_. Somehow, it just didn't feel the same with all the men around, including Quark. _Especially_ Quark. The ostensibly obsequious Ferengi had managed to worm his way under her skin three times in as many days, leaving her sickened at his obstreperous chicanery and artifice. Almost as bad as Q himself. The only way she'd been able to get rid of him thus far was to buy a hideously overpriced drink from him. So while Keiko fussed over Molly, who was missing Naomi sorely, she sat sipping that drink and talking with Jadzia. Much as the Trill hated to admit it, Kira knew that the girl missed piloting _Voyager_. She got such a kick from maneuvering large objects sometimes. One of these days the three of them had to find some time to take the _Defiant_ out on a spin. 

Bashir walked into the bar, obviously taking some time off from his work in the infirmary. Kira grinned. This was the chance she'd been waiting for the last few days. She beckoned the doctor over, and Bashir headed for them with a slight smile on his face.

Quark shuffled up to them as Bashir approached, and Kira dismissed him with several colorful suggestions on what she could do to the back of his head with a very large pitchfork if he didn't leave them alone.

Bashir nodded at the two women as Kira offered him a drink. "Hello, ladies. Is there anything I can do for you?"

The perfect set-up line!

Kira smiled sweetly at their chief medical officer. "As a matter of fact, I did have something in mind, actually…"

"And what would that be, precisely?" asked Bashir, ever eager to please.

And now for the punch line and the million-dollar look… Kira readied herself to burn Bashir's expression into her mind for posterity.

"Doctor, could you give me a set of bigger teeth?"

******

The _Enterprise_ was back in business. Everything was running smoothly as usual. The entire senior crew, as well as Guinan, was having a good time in the officer's lounge as the rest of the crew worked with the ship. Picard pretended to have a few fascinating stories to tell, while Riker had offered to recount some of the more raunchy jokes he had exchanged with Paris. To save the rest of the crew from the horrors that would entail consent, the women had quickly begun to regale them with tales of heroism from their stint on _Voyager_. The men were amused by the amusing moments, were disgusted by Q's disgusting effrontery, and were thrilled by the thrilling victory the women had scored over the exasperating omnipotent being.

At the end of it all Riker nudged Guinan. "You know, it's pretty handy to have you around to deal with Q," he said. "Still want to take up the bartender post on this _Enterprise_?"

Guinan shook her head emphatically. "After this, I'd love nothing more than to go on a long vacation to somewhere that's far away, peaceful, and most of all, Q-free." At the deflated look on the faces of the rest of the crew, she sighed in an acceding manner and added, "But I'll give it some thought."

LaForge sighed. "It's too bad that Reg just got posted off the _Enterprise_ and missed all the fun." His face creased into a grin. "Just wait until I tell him what happened with _Voyager_…"

******

"Alright, where is she?" Q flashed back into his little abode in the Continuum in mild irritation. "Where's the little schemer who ruined all my plans?"

Cass appeared in the doorway of the room. "Were you looking for me?"

"Ah, so that's where you've been hiding all this while." Q folded his arms and his voice took on a remonstrating tone. "Really, Cass, I'm disappointed in you. Are you aware just how far we strayed from the original objective of the Treasure Hunt? And to think that I spent all my time planning every Quset and even to the extent of creating all the opposing teams…" He shook his head as if aggrieved. "I took all the trouble to rescue you, teach you, meet your every need, and _this_ is the thanks I get?" He shook his head. "If this is something you picked up from dearest Kathryn, appointing her as q's godmother was a very big mistake."

Cass shrugged. "She rescued me, taught me, and met my every need. It was the least I could do for her."

Q spluttered. "What, is this some kind of sexism? I did the same thing for you, and I don't see you repaying the favor!"

Cass folded her arms. "She wasn't omnipotent, and therefore her gift was more magnanimous than yours. Besides, the _only_ reason why you decided to take me in was because you wanted me to look after Quinlan!"

"Not the _only_ reason," responded Q, but it was a half-hearted protest.

Cass wandered over and picked Quinlan up, carrying the child's weight despite her petite form. "I win the bet, by the way."

Q feigned ignorance. "What bet?"

Cass turned around and gave him a sly don't-try-that-trick-on-me glance. "They didn't recognize me."

"Well, my dear girl, in case you didn't notice, I put a baffling shield around them specifically designed to _prevent_ them from recognizing you… and furthermore, the name trick was my idea."

"I don't think my changing my name mattered much anyway," she said in annoyance, propping Quinlan up on one hip. "It's too phonetically similar to make a difference."

"Oh I'm sure it is, _Kes_," said Q. "Face it, everyone else fell for it because they didn't reconcile you with your name." He huffed in an affronted manner.

"Believe what you want." Kes walked into the adjoining room, still carrying Quinlan.

The girl nudged her gently. "So, did you take back Kathy's powers?"

Kes just smiled, putting one finger to her lips. "No, just suppressed them."

With a giggle, Quinlan waved a finger at the Ocampan. "Naughty… you weren't supposed to do that." She glanced slyly at Kes. "Does Daddy know?"

Kes patted Quinlan fondly on the head. "No. Nobody will find out… I'll make sure that she never uses them unduly." She favored the child with a small, wicked grin. "I won't tell if you won't."

"Deal." Quinlan shook Kes' hand.

"You know," said Kes causually as she looked over her shoulder, "I wonder what devious schemes you brother and your father are hatching behind our backs?" She narrowed her eyes. "Maybe we should hold a masculine version of Ship of the Valkyries for them someday, and see how they manage without us women. Continuum of the ValQries."

"Men stink," agreed Quinlan with a giggle.

Kes put the girl down with a smile. "Come on, let's go find your mother." And the two headed out of the house and into the depths of the Continuum.

Q watched them go, then turned to q. "I have to do something about those women," he said gravely. "I'm going to have to make them _suffer_ for all that they did to me."

q grinned, his mind already scheming with ideas. "I have a few suggestions…"

His father gave him an appraising glance. "What...? Oh… I see… Most ingenious." He paced, and frowned in thought. "It can be done… oh yes, it can!" He thought some more. "That was a brilliant idea, son. The only problem is, how are we going to execute this?"

"I can do a good imitation of Kes," offered the young q cheerfully. 

"Of course you can. It'd cause a splendid kink in the timeline, wouldn't it? And we just know how much Madame Captain hates time paradoxes." Q grinned savagely. "And only this time it wouldn't be a real time paradox. ... Yes! I like this. It is as devilish as befits a Q."

q paused to consider it for a while. "Kes will never talk to you again, though…"

Q shrugged it off. "We'll set it right in the end… and I'd say she deserves to squirm a little as well." He paused to think for a while. "Oh, and be sure to do something nasty to Lt. Torres… she tried to bite me."

q's evil grin widened. "So... if I help you with the impersonation of Kes, do I get something in return?"

Q narrowed his eyes, feeling a catch coming on. "What?"

"A day alone on the _Voyager_, as myself, with none of you around."

Q blinked at the cunning in his son's voice, then considered it. How bad could it get anyway? "I suppose the answer is yes…"

****

______The End______

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